


green and gilded

by nasri



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:13:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 34,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6023218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasri/pseuds/nasri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The next time he visits his parents there are flowers left in the grass, pressed back against the gravestone. They are yellow and white daffodils, plain and wilting. </p>
<p>“Who’s been to see you?” He asks, taking a single photo of the flowers with their drooping stems and curled petals and the wet winter grass that surrounds them. His mother would call it kind, his father might say it's curious, and Bilbo takes another petal to tuck into his pocket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not entirely happy with this, but I am super ready to be finished with it. So here we go.

His father is buried in Leyton. It’s an old sprawling cemetery that sits just along the tracks of the Central Line, overgrown and green and perpetually damp. Bilbo has gone to visit his grave every weekend since he was just a child and every weekend his mother would sit by his side, their backs to the polished black granite of his tombstone and exchange memories like photographs.  
  
Bilbo only had so many. They were limited to improvised goals scored in the living room with two chairs and a spongy ball, games that ended with them both sprawled across the carpet, breathless with laughter. He remembers how he would sneak him little slices of a chocolate orange before dinner, how his aftershave smelled, the way he looked seated in his favourite armchair with a cup of tea at his side. By the time he turned sixteen he had exhausted all his stories and so his mother spoke instead. She never cried, never once played the role of grieving widow.     
  
“There’s no sense in it,” she would tell him. “No sense in it at all.”  
  
And now he sits with his rain coat spread out over damp grass and thinks that for the first time in a very long time, Belladonna Took got something wrong. He fiddles idly with the lens to his camera, an old Fujifilm from the sixties. It belonged to his father and after he died his mother would carry it around, hooked over her shoulder.  
  
He looks through the view finder, twisting the lens into focus on a hazy grey sky and the clutter of old tomb stones and monuments, crumbling and weather stained. Were it not for the occasional pass of the tube, with its clunky screeching wheels, Bilbo thinks this would be the most quiet place in all of London. Perhaps it’s irony though, that while he sits back against his father’s grave, surrounded by his grandparents and great aunts, all he can remember is his mother and how she looked as she pulled weeds from around the stone and laid her flowers every spring.  
  
“Excuse me.” A man in a fitted suit with a jacket draped over his arm trudges across the field, stopping just in front of him. His hair is windswept and his eyes are dark and he looks like he hasn’t slept in days but he is beautiful all the same. “It is disrespectful,” he snaps, gesturing at Bilbo’s camera. “This is a place to grieve not a photography project.”  
  
Without a word Bilbo pulls his bag into his lap and digs around until he finds his license and hands it to the man with a smile. He looks down, reading it, and glances back up with a question ready on his lips until he catches sight of the names stretched across every tombstone, every epitaph in each direction.  
  
“Baggins,” he breathes, before handing back his card. He doesn’t apologise, he doesn’t bow his head or flush in embarrassment. He turns to walk away.  
  
“It’s not prohibited, you know,” Bilbo calls after him. “This is church property.”  
  
“Not anymore.” His voice echoes off the stone and Bilbo is certain he’ll hear it for days to come.  
  
“Since when?”  
  
The man pauses, his fingers lingering on the top of an orthodox cross. “Since yesterday,” he says.  
  
—  
  
His mother had no ties to Leyton, unlike the Baggins’ and their five generations of bodies laid to rest in the marshy, stubborn ground. Instead her ashes were spread off of Porthpean Beach. She never did need much sleep. So now, when Bilbo visits the cemetery he visits for two, at least he tries to, but his mother’s voice is all that comes to mind.    
  
He turns up every Sunday and sits against his father’s tombstone to take a single photograph. The cemetery is over crowded, with old graves shifting into each other as the ground settles and tree roots dislodge banks of soil and Bilbo has yet to capture anything twice. He thinks if it were anywhere other than sleepy, secluded Leyton, Bilbo wouldn’t be so keen on visiting. But up until one cloudy afternoon, the man in the suit was the only person he had ever encountered there.  
  
Bilbo sees him from a distance and peeks around the edge of a marble carved rose to watch as he stumbles down the pathway, his head hanging low, before he collapses at the base of a mausoleum. He looks young, pale, his fingers weaving into unruly curls and tugging at the roots. Bilbo stands, brushes the dirt from his trousers and walks to his side.  
  
He has his eyes covered, his fingertips red from the first bite of autumn with tear tracks streaked across his skin and he doesn’t look up until Bilbo is sitting directly in front of him. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
He jumps, wiping at his eyes and breathing heavily through his mouth. “Well this is embarrassing.” He mumbles, his voice rough, bent with a pleasant northern pitch.  
  
“It’s not,” Bilbo assures him with a smile. He looks no older than twenty, with the bright eyes of a child.  
  
“No, I mean- uh-,” he coughs. “No one died. Well I mean loads of people have died,” he says, eyeing the graves. “But no one of mine has died- no one I liked. Fuck’s sake, that sounded terrible and it’s not what I meant.”  
  
Bilbo laughs. “Yeah, I think I got something out of that. I’m a bit relived, honestly. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to say to you. But my offer still stands.”  
  
He smiles with red rimmed, beautiful eyes. “You just went right for it, mate.”  
  
“I figured if I was going to attempt to console a stranger I may as well do it properly.”  
  
He wipes his eyes with the backs of his hand, shaking his head. “It’s alright,” he says. “I’m useless at that shit as well. Kili, by the way.”  
  
“Bilbo,” he says. “It’s lovely to meet you.”  
  
—  
  
Kili is London born but Leicester raised, the product of boarding schools and an absentee mother, over confident and underfed. Had Bilbo been a decade younger he might have hated him. But now he sits across from him in a hipster cafe with black furniture and white walls and he sees someone young, someone enthusiastic and unafraid and just a little bit heartbroken. They never speak about their afternoon in the cemetery. Kili doesn’t ask him why he was there and Bilbo doesn’t ask why he was crying and together they meet in central London every two weeks to indulge in their mutual pass time.  
  
“Banker,” Kili says immediately, watching as a man in a navy blue suit strolls up to the register. “Has his coke door delivered.”  
  
Bilbo snorts into his tea. “Or a big shot QC. Helps bankrupt small newspapers for libel.”  
  
“Oh,” Kili says. “Good one. How about this?” He nods in the direction of a young girl with her hair pulled back into a bun, setting a tray down on an empty table by the window. “Classics student, doesn’t play well with others.” They watch as she digs through her overstuffed rucksack and pulls out a tome of a textbook which reads _Accounting and Finance_ in block letters. “Yeah alright, maths student. Still doesn’t play well with others.”  
  
“He definitely has a trust fund,” Bilbo says, glancing at a boy with tattered jeans and unwashed hair. “Education paid for, monthly allowance from his parents.”  
  
“Oh come on,” Kili says, glancing over his shoulder. “There’s a difference between tramp and tramp chic.”  
  
“I don’t know, he dresses an awful lot like you.”  
  
“I’ll have you know these jeans were two hundred quid. Trust me, I know a posh kid when I see one.” And of course he does, because Kili fits the bill down to the last letter. He lives in a flat owned by his uncle, the same man who pays for his fees and his rather extortionate drinking habit, his weekend tendency towards drum and bass clubs in Farringdon.  
  
“I’ll concede to your expertise.”  
  
“And I to yours.” He flashes him a cheeky half smile followed up with a bitten lip and pleading eyes. “On that note-“  
  
“I’m not writing your paper, Kili.”  
  
“It’s written! I’m finished. It just needs looking over.”  
  
Bilbo raises his eyebrows. “I’m not going to rewrite it for you either.”  
  
“I would never dream of asking. Mainly because you’re too uptight to ever say yes-“  
  
“It’s like you forget I have a real job or something.”  
  
Kili ignores him. “I know reading stuff over is allowed, you stuffy old man. I used to get-" he stops, suddenly, and looks away. It’s not the first time he has spoken before his tongue catches up with him, beginning a sentence he has no intention of finishing. Bilbo isn’t sure exactly who it is that Kili has so meticulously cut out of his life, out of his stories of late night adventures and early morning starts. But he thinks he could probably guess. “Anyway, it’s fine. I know it’s fine. Loads of people have gone over my stuff before.”  
   
“Alright,” Bilbo sighs. “But for grammar and structure only.”  
  
Kili smiles like he’s just promised him the world and looks over at the woman walking through the door, her hands full with designer shopping bags. “Personal assistant,” he says and Bilbo applauds him for avoiding the obvious.  
  
—  
  
He nearly doesn’t notice at first. He’s sat in this very spot for so many years that the overgrown grass and the falling stones just blur together. Occasionally a fox will cross his path, entirely unconcerned with either him or the creaking of the passing trains, but little else changes. What he does see, he sees in sections. The crumbling rock wall that separates the old graves from the new slowly fills its gaps with missing stones, sliding into place like keyholes down the field. The thick, overgrown grass that sprouts along the gates is mowed down, overturned headstones are righted. By the time October rolls around and Bilbo sits beside his father’s grave with a thermos of tea in hand, the cemetery looks tame.  
  
He takes his photographs, murmurs his goodbye’s and steps carefully around the graves and back onto the path. It’s nearly four o’clock and already dusk has settled and Bilbo thinks he rather hates autumn. He can make out the silhouette of someone standing just outside the main gates, still and unmoving and perhaps a little afraid.  
  
“It’s open until eight,” he says gently as he passes. “You still have time.”  
  
“I know.” His voice rings in a familiar sombre note and Bilbo smiles as he looks up at him.  
  
“Did you do all this then?” Bilbo gestures back behind him. He looks down, his brows pulled into a scowl. “Aren’t you the man who told me off for taking photographs?” He continues. “I’m guessing you’re responsible for cleaning it up a bit?”  
  
“Not directly,” he says, rolling his shoulders, staring out across the fields.  
  
“Well no, you don’t look the type to be out there pulling weeds. Did you buy it?” He looks distinctly uncomfortable but Bilbo doesn’t feel particularly inclined to leave him be.  
  
“Yes,” he says, finally. “None of the policies will change. It’s just-“ he stops, as if something has caught his attention, before he straightens even further, his breath turned to clouds in the half light.  
  
“Someone had to take care of it,” Bilbo says for him. “Well I’m glad, honestly. I’ve been coming here since I was seven years-old and I’ve never once seen it look like this. You’ve done well.”  
  
He nods, the smallest possible acknowledgment, and Bilbo leaves him to the silence of Saint Patrick’s.  
  
—  
  
Kili doesn’t sleep well, some nights he doesn’t sleep at all. Instead he puts on comfortable shoes and see-through tops and thrashes about on dance floors, losing himself to the steady pulse of drum and bass. Bilbo imagines he must be the envy of those clubs. He is beautiful and fluid and he never leaves alone.    
  
Bilbo’s fingers brush against the polished silver knocker and he checks his phone to make sure the address is correct. Kili has a habit of showing up unannounced at his flat, but this is the first time he’s caught a glimpse of the quiet, picturesque street in Bethnal Green that Kili grew up on. His house is a beautiful two story terrace of pale brick and caved wood and it doesn’t suit him at all.  
  
After a few moments of shouting Kili’s name through cupped hands, the door swings open. Kili’s eyes are red rimmed and his hair is mussed from sleep and despite his tendency towards ripped jeans this may be the first time since the day he met him that he looks just a little bit undone. “Bilbo,” he murmurs, glaring past him into the street. “What’s going on?”  
  
“It’s Saturday,” he says, holding up his offering of coffee.  
  
“Yeah, and? Listen, Bilbo, this isn’t a great time.”  
  
“You told me to come here, Kili.” He says, eyebrows raised. “You begged me to edit your paper and then we were going to sort through books to donate?”  
  
Kili’s eyes widen. “Oh fuck. Was that today?”  
  
“Like I said, it’s Saturday.”  
  
Kili looks slightly torn, glancing back behind him and squinting out into the light. “Yeah, alright.” He ushers him inside. “Go sit in the living room, but I uh- I have to get rid of someone.”  
  
“I was young once,” Bilbo tells him with a smile. “Where’s your laptop? I’ll get started.”  
  
Kili leads him into the sitting room where blackout curtains are pulled closed, giving the impression of perpetual dusk. “Watch your toes,” he says, moving to halfheartedly push them open, letting a bit of dusty light filter through the windows. “You never know when a French end table or a letter desk will jump out in front of you.” The room is littered with furniture, a mix of deep, rich oak chairs and beautifully carved chaise lounges. Everything appears to be antique and well looked after but the sheer volume of pieces feels at best excessive.  
  
Bilbo sits on the edge of silk embroidered cushions on a Victorian settee and runs his hand along the carved armrest. This was not what he had expected.  
  
“My uncle used to move a lot,” he says, watching him. “He only just started to settle. But he’s a collector. Keeps everything in this flat. You should see the upstairs,” he adds. “We have a room devoted to armoires and buffets. He’ll never find the time to get his own damn house. Anyway, I'll be right back.” He sets a thin silver Mac in his lap. “I’ll make tea and all that jazz in just a second.”  
  
He all but runs through the doorway and up the stairs. Bilbo opens his laptop and begins to read, making edits as he goes, wishing he had proper paper and a red ink pen. He looks up, minutes later, to the creak of hardwood. The boy is rather beautiful, dressed in fitted military green trousers and a white button down, rumpled and worn from the night before. His hair is a neat, trimmed blonde, with pale eyelashes and blue eyes. He could be a flawless match for Kili’s dark looks, such perfect contrast, but Bilbo knows better.  
  
The boy leaves without a word and Bilbo returns to his editing.  
  
—  
  
Kili is stunning and well spoken and he knows every barista in a five mile radius of Euston Square station by name, he is quick to laugh and even quicker with money and Bilbo can’t quite work out what it is he’s missing, what hole he is trying to fill by sprawling out across his living room floor as Bilbo sits cross legged at his coffee table, reading through funding proposals.    
  
“You are just so boring,” Kili tells him, reaching blindly for the remote.  
  
“And yet you’re still here.” He adjusts his glasses and sets his paper aside. “And you’re eating all my food.”  
  
“I told you I’d pay for your food. Or better yet I’ll just bring my own food so I don’t have to eat yours when I come round.”  
  
Bilbo groans into his hands. “Kili you are not leaving groceries at my flat.”  
  
“Then stop complaining about my eating habits.” His attention is quickly lost to the proposal Bilbo had just abandoned. “What’s this?”  
  
“They want our charity to give them money.”  
  
“For what?” Kili asks, squinting at the fine print.  
  
“To send electric kilns to rural villages in Tanzania. Morons, the lot of them. They want to send electric kilns, which use more energy than the fucking London Eye, to a country with very limited energy outlets.”  
  
“So I’m guessing you’ll deny them?” Kili asks with a grin.  
  
“You’ve guessed correctly.” He picks through another proposal as Kili paws at a few loose papers at his side.  
  
“You know,” he begins, laying with his hands pillowed behind his head. “You should give me a job.”  
  
Bilbo watches him with raised eyebrows. “Kili, I know an awful lot about you.”  
  
“So?”  
  
“So that means I know you’re the least employable person in all of London.”  
  
Kili doesn’t even have the decency to look offended. “Well yeah that’s true- no wait, hear me out. I have no fucking clue what I want to do with my life and I’m taking all of three modules this term, it’s not like I’d ask you to pay me. Call it work experience. Maybe I’ll find something I’m good at.” He pushes himself up and moves to sit at Bilbo’s side. “I mean, you’re helping people, right? Maybe I’ll like helping people.”  
  
“Yeah, we do, but working in an office isn’t exactly field work in Sudan, you get that right? It’s mostly reading over proposals and doing research or coordinating meetings. We have events and everything but they’re just comprised of drunk, wealthy men bidding on signed rugby balls in an attempt to spend more money than their coworkers. It’s not much fun, Kili, I promise.”  
  
“Hey. I didn’t say I wanted it to be fun.” He gently nudges his shoulder. “Give me more credit than that.”  
  
Bilbo turns to look at him. He is a Botticelli portrait, flawless and sincere. “You’d have to actually comb your hair, you know.” Kili turns to grip his arm, his mouth falling open in a grin. “And wear clothes made for adults.”  
  
“I absolutely will,” Kili says. “I promise, I won’t disappoint you. When can I start?”  
  
—  
  
Kili goes away to Majorca for the Christmas holidays, to a beach house that his family shared between siblings for years and years though neither his uncles nor his mother ever visit anymore. Bilbo grew up with Christmases at his grandmother’s house in North Yorkshire, busy and bright and unbelievably cold. There was nearly always snow on the ground and his uncles would sneak him sips of mulled wine and he would fall asleep in front of the fire place with Drogo at his side. He hates the idea of Kili being alone with only the surf for company.  
  
“Oh I won’t be alone,” Kili assures him with an exaggerated wink. Bilbo thinks he may as well be. “Anyway, I bet you’ll be counting down days 'til I’m back. Your soon to be employee of the year.”  
  
“Don’t count your chickens,” he tells him, but Kili kisses him goodbye and shouts “too late” over his shoulder.  
  
Bilbo spends Christmas Eve sitting cross legged by the fire, a glass of cider as his feet, flipping through a popup book with a lapful of children who sigh over each page. He runs his fingers through Frodo’s hair, black and curly and beyond taming, and hopes very much that someone has loved Kili as much as he loves every single one of his wayward cousins.  
  
—  
  
No matter how many years Bilbo spends attending charity auctions, he doesn’t ever think he’ll get used to them. Part of him still hates every bank executive he has to smile at, every forced laugh, every “I’ve _been_ to Africa, you know.” He has listened to more drunken renditions of the Eton Boating Song than he will ever willing admit to and each note grates on thin nerves.  
  
It is perhaps less surprising than it ought to be that Kili handles fundraising events with a worrying amount of skill. He prowls the room in a well fitted suit and hunts for the banker most likely to write off a cheque at the sight of war torn villages, for the barrister who has a religious dedication to West Ham United, for the PR manager with a client to impress. He fits into their little semi-circles, with his polished Oxfords and slicked back hair. He looks like he was born for this.  
  
“Philanthropy just runs in the family.” A large, bearded Scottish man has Kili in a half head lock, surrounded by a small flock of men in navy suits. “My cousin raised him right, he did. His brother too, off risking his life in Pakistan.”  
  
“Lebanon,” Kili corrects him and despite his practiced smile Bilbo can see the slight hunch to his shoulders, the way he plays idly with the buttons on his blazer. For a moment his eyes look distant, like there is something projected onto the ivory painted walls that only he can see. “Not exactly risking his life.”  
  
“Surely he isn’t military,” says a small, crude man with greased hair.  
  
“Foreign Office, actually. Queen and country and that. Cousin Gloin, I am terribly sorry but I have a few more guests to greet. You know how it is.”  
  
“A drink before you go, laddie?” Kili waves him off politely, shaking the hands of every man in arm’s reach before retreating back in Bilbo’s direction.  
  
“You could’ve helped me out there.” Kili whines, saddling up beside him. They both nod politely to a passing elderly woman and Kili snatches the glass of champagne from Bilbo’s fingers.  
  
“You were handling it very well.”  
  
“I handle it every time we have a family reunion. I really don’t need to handle it here.” Kili has taken to charity work far better than he ever expected. Initially, he spent four horrible weeks at a desk as Bilbo watched his attention span slowly deteriorate to dust. It wasn’t until Dori came down with the flu that Bilbo made the panicked decision to lend him out to events coordination and all it took was three days before he made it permanent.  
  
“Any other relatives on the guest list you want me to help you avoid?” He asks as Kili leans heavily against his side.  
  
“Actually, yes.”  
  
“You’re joking.”  
  
“Not joking. Gloin’s brother’s on there, another cousin of mine. And Dwalin but he’ll stay away. He was probably forced into it. You hate these things, right? Just stick with me and I’ll let you know if I need a diversion. You and me Bilbo,” he says, throwing an arm around his shoulder. “We’ll make a great team.”  
  
“You mean you’ll do all the talking and I’ll tag along to whisk you off should an unwanted relative appear?”  
  
“Exactly. A great team.”  
  
—  
  
It’s February when he sees him again. He stands at the other side of the cemetery before a gravestone of emerald granite as Bilbo watches from his usual spot in the grass. He’s shivering and his legs are numb, but Bilbo doesn’t want to leave, not yet. The man doesn’t lay flowers or brush dust from the stone. Instead, he stands with his hands in the pockets of his trench coat as he stares down at the barren soil like it still has something left to say.  
  
Bilbo watches him and wonders what Kili would say if he were here, what guesses he would make about the man across the field. A widower perhaps, alone for the first time in many years. Maybe he’s military and these visits are born of guilt, or perhaps an estranged parent lies buried at his feet. He isn’t sure what his guess would be, because no matter what combination of variables he constructs to build this man’s life, nothing feels quite right.  
  
He stands with a lingering touch to his father’s grave while thinking of his mother’s smile and turns towards the path. The man looks up as he reaches the gates so Bilbo waves, a smile at his lips. He hesitates but after just a moment he nods his head in response.  
  
—  
  
Bilbo knocks on Kili’s door at half past nine, ignoring his groan of, “Come on Bilbo, not today,” as he shoves past him and into the entry way.

“I’m going back to bed,” he says.  
  
“I’ll give you the twenty minutes it takes for me to make breakfast. Then you’re getting up and we’re going to the book fair.”

Kili mumbles inaudibly as he climbs the staircase and Bilbo shifts his grocery bag in one hand. He dodges bookcases and end tables in the dusky sitting room and makes for the sunny white glare of the kitchen. He pauses in the doorway, glancing around at the granite counter tops and their dark contrast to the antique corner cabinets and the mahogany carved dinner table set against bay windows. Everything is covered in a fine layer of dust, with the counter space next to the kettle dotted with water stains and empty mugs.  
  
“Interesting choice,” he says to himself, setting the groceries down and inspecting the piano that sits in the corner of the kitchen, shining black lacquer. It is spotless, wiped clean of dust and fingerprints and Bilbo tries to imagine Kili sitting at the thin little bench, his shoulders uncharacteristically straight, fingers poised. He flicks open the cover and drags his fingers lightly across the keys. It sounds in tune, echoing through the low ceilings as Bilbo sits and taps out a tune that his aunt had taught him as a child. Bilbo’s fingers stumble and cross as he tries to remember the keys, how it used to sound played in his grandparent’s house, his mother watching from the sofa.  
  
“Please don’t.” Kili is standing in the doorway, his hood falling over his mess of hair. “It’s not mine.”  
  
Bilbo looks up at him, sees his dark shaded eyes and the exhausted curve of his shoulder. He sees the remnants of stamps on the backs of his hands and his nails are bitten to the skin. “Sit down,” he says, closing the lid to the piano. “I’ll make breakfast.”  
  
—  
  
Bilbo stands with folded arms against the carved stone walls of Guildhall, watching as straight backed government ministers and civil servants toe along the scarlet floors, lit by low hanging chandlers. Their voices echo off the vaulted ceilings and Bilbo briefly considers drowning himself in one of the bathroom sinks. He sighs, keeping his head down and avoiding eye contact to the very best of his ability as he searches for Kili among a sea of a black and navy. If nothing else, he is a terrible gossip and Bilbo could use some entertainment.  
  
He finds him by one of the auction tables, speaking to a man with a long white beard and kind eyes. Kili looks genuinely happy to see him, but as Bilbo draws closer, his smile falls.  
  
“I spoke to Fili yesterday,” he says in a soft Scottish lilt, out of place among the Oxbridge drawls of his peers. “He asked after you, and mentioned that you haven’t been answering his calls.”  
  
“I’ve been busy,” he says, fiddling with a cufflink.  
  
“I told him as much. I can’t say he believed me.”  
  
Kili chews at his lip, ducks his head and murmurs, “How is he?”  
  
“He seems happy. Beirut suits him, I think. The work suits him. His French lessons served him well and his Arabic is coming along.” He smiles, sympathetic and knowing. “He misses you, laddie. Perhaps you should call.”  
  
Kili doesn’t answer so the man squeezes his shoulder and leaves with a soft, “Give Thorin my love, when you see him next.” He retreats to a group of haggard looking bureaucrats and Kili scrubs at his eyes with his fingertips before he sets off in search of the drinks table. By the time Bilbo makes it to his side, he is half way through a glass of red wine.  
  
“You alright?”  
  
“Fine,” Kili answers, flashing him a fake smile. “I just handle the corporate stuff better than these government events, you know? Bankers at least know how to have a laugh.”  
  
“How about we get out of here and go down to St. Paul’s or something? I’ll just check in with a few people, make sure they have it handled, and then we can head out?”  
  
“Bilbo,” Kili sighs his name against the rim of his glass. “My eternal love, and nothing short of it.”  
  
He wades through crowds to find his department heads. They all smile knowingly when they see him coming as Bilbo has quite the reputation for bowing out before the auctions ever start. Kili is on his second glass by the time Bilbo hooks a hand around his elbow and drags him towards the door.  
  
“You seem keen,” Kili says idly, sticking his hands in his pockets and rolling his shoulders back. He looks right in the shadows of ancient government buildings, in front of towering spires. He looks like he belongs there and Bilbo finds he hates the very idea of it.  
  
“If I had to hear one more MP mention public welfare I was going to drown myself in the bathroom.”  
  
“Nice bathrooms though,” Kili says and their laughter echoes. “Come on. We can still salvage this night.”  
  
They walk down towards St. Paul’s, where tourists crowd in circles outside the lit dome, pointing cameras up at its shining gilded crosses. They stop at Marks & Spencer for a bottle of wine each before making their way across the street to the Millennium Bridge. It's cold but calm as they sit side by side on the icy concrete steps that lead down to the bank and watch the city lights with barely a word between them. Kili’s bottle is half empty by the time the wind picks up, pushing his hair back in a tilted crown of curls.  
  
“Tell me about your brother,” Bilbo says, leaning back on his palms.  
  
“I’d rather not.” He takes a drink and closes his eyes.  
  
“You sure?” He asks.  
  
“Yeah,” Kili whispers. “I’m sure.”  
  
—  
  
It’s his mother’s birthday and Bilbo lays tulips at his father’s grave. They will wilt and wither on the cold marshy ground, but she wouldn’t mind. It's raining, a steady downpour, and he stands in wellington boots with a sturdy black umbrella and watches as the mud swallows each petal. Bilbo adjusts his gloves and glances over each grave in turn. He has every name memorised, every date, every epitaph of loving mother and faithful husband and it’s time and time alone that keeps it all from blending together into something unrecognisable.  
  
“Excuse me.”  
  
Bilbo turns, imaging a trick of sound, the steady percussion of rain against canvas but instead he finds the man from the cemetery gates, his collar turned up against the rain, his hair falling out of place and into his eyes.

“Hello,” Bilbo says. “You do know it’s raining, don't you?” He holds his umbrella up, stepping closer until it covers them both and says, “It’s nice to see you again.”  
  
“I wanted to apologise for the way I acted. You had every right to be here, without or without a camera.”  
  
“Grief is not very conducive to manners,” Bilbo assures him. He peaks over his shoulder and sees a black car parked inside the gates, its lights left on and engine running. “Did you come all the way out here just to apologise? I must say, I’m certain you would’ve had other opportunities.”  
  
“I was passing by,” he says and Bilbo laughs, leaving him looking slightly flustered. “And I haven’t said it properly yet, so I’m sorry for the way I treated you and for not saying it any sooner.”  
  
“Apology accepted. Though, could I ask a question, before you go?” He nods so Bilbo continues. “Who do you come to visit?”  
  
“My grandfather.” He looks down at the graves that surround him and says, “I don’t know why he asked to be buried here. I’d never heard of this place until my solicitor read me his will. As far as I know, he never once lived in Leyton. No one in our family has.” He unfolds like spring weather and Bilbo thinks he sees a glimpse of something gilded inside.  
  
“So you bought it?”  
  
“It meant something to him,” he says.  
  
“I’m glad,” Bilbo tells him. “I really am. Now go on, get out of the rain.”  
  
He hesitates. “Would you like a ride?”  
  
“No,” he says, with a gentle touch to his arm. “I think I’ll stay a while. But it’s kind of you to offer.” He watches him go, his shoulders hunched against the wind and as the headlights shine a path along the distant hills, Bilbo wishes he had thought to ask his name.      
  
—  
  
They eat lunch at a little bistro near the Camden locks, watching the trendy twenty-something’s in their high heeled boots and dyed hair as they scurry past. They stay out a little longer than they ought to, longer than their lunch break generally allows, but Kili seems oddly content with the clear winter weather, so they take their time with fabricated stories for each stranger that catches their eye.  
  
“Camden sure attracts some weirdos Bilbo. Fucking great sandwiches though,” he says with his mouth full of food. “Never knew this place existed.”  
  
“I’m an expert at Camden Town,” Bilbo says, smiling. “You just never trust me.”  
  
“You eat pâté,” Kili points out before reaching over to slide a gherkin onto Bilbo’s plate. “And fucking pickles. You freak. Oh, by the way.” He digs a hand into his pocket and pulls out a keyring strung with two silver cut keys and a little golden model of Big Ben hanging off the side. “Here. Figured you should probably have a copy.”  
  
“Are these your house keys?”  
  
“Yeah, one of the spares.”  
  
Bilbo raises his eyebrows. “I’m not giving you the keys to my flat, Kili.”  
  
He laughs, shaking his head. “Chill, Bilbo. Just figured they’d come in handy, that’s all. Plus I’ve locked myself out more than once and had to call a smith, so it’s a bit like insurance.”  
  
He pockets the keyring with a shrug. “I’ll still knock,” he says and Kili’s laugh is like a breath of fresh air.  
  
“Yeah, I’m sure you will.”  
  
—  
  
He uses the key not a week later when Kili calls in sick on a Thursday afternoon. He sounded dreadful over the phone, his voice thick and his words slurred. “It’s the plague,” he’d said.  
  
“It sounds to me like a cold.”  
  
“This is the end. Promise me something? Make sure my replacement isn’t from King’s College, those fucking pricks.”

Bilbo soothed him with promises of soup from their favourite cafe in Kentish Town.

“Don’t bother knocking,” he mumbled into the receiver and so he doesn’t. Bilbo pushes the door open, hearing the familiar creek of wood, and calls Kili’s name. The flat is dark, so he fumbles for the switch, using his mobile phone to see by.  
  
“Christ, Kili,” he says as he walks carefully through the sitting room, avoiding the mess of old takeout containers and misplaced shoes and switches on the kitchen light. The piano gleams, polished and spotless, next to the dirty glasses and empty plates that riddle every remaining flat surface in the kitchen. Bilbo pours the soup into a pan to reheat it and begins washing dishes by hand until it begins to simmer.  
  
“Kili,” he calls again, as he carries a bowl through the hall and up the stairs, a packet of Ritz tucked under his arm. He makes it to the landing and glances around the hall. He’s rarely been upstairs, save for brief attempts to pull Kili back down them, and he’s never once seen his bedroom. Every door is closed except for one and Bilbo thinks the message is rather clear.  
  
“Kili,” he says again, pushing the door open and reaching for the shadow of a standing lamp. The room floods with soft yellow light and the lump in the centre of the bed groans, curling beneath the duvet. Bilbo looks around as he sets the bowl on his bedside table, surprised to see his bedroom bare of nearly anything but bookshelves, filled and overflowing.  
  
He sits on the mattress and pulls at the duvet until Kili emerges, squinting up at him. “I hate you.”  
  
“I brought soup.”  
  
He struggles to sit up, running a hand through sweat drenched hair. “I hate you slightly less.” Bilbo presses the bowl into his hands as Kili tries to breathe through blocked sinuses.  
  
“Eat,” he says. The bookshelf to the right of the bed is covered in a collection of identical books, bound in black leather with gilded letters along the spines. They look heavy and expensive and well loved. He stands, running his fingers along the titles of Greek prose, pulling out a copy of _Medea_ and admiring the heavy woven pages.    
  
“They’re yours?” He asks, thinking of the piano, untouched but well looked after.  
  
“Yeah,” Kili mumbles around the spoon. “They’re custom made. I got them every year, as a gift. I still do.”  
  
Bilbo always assumed Kili’s method of choosing his course of study was more or less left to a dart thrown at a list of possible subjects. Kili smiles then, the tip of his nose is red and his skin is flushed with fever but still he sees more than he ever lets on. “You thought I was doing classics as a cop out, didn’t you?”  
  
“Yeah,” Bilbo admits, carefully putting the book back in its place. “A bit.” He sees it now, what he missed before. The other shelves are filled with books on ancient Greek alphabets, photo journals of Athens. A worn copy of _the Iliad_ is left open on his bedside table, stacked on top of Shakespeare’s _Coriolanus_.  
  
“Have you read them all?” He asks.  
  
Kili blows idly over his broth. “Every one. Not such a shallow posh boy now, am I?”  
  
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Bilbo says, taking a seat beside him and handing over the packet of crackers. “You must’ve done something ridiculous like Classical Studies for A Levels.”  
  
“And Latin,” Kili admits with a smile.  
  
Bilbo laughs, shaking his head. “Posh, definitely. But not shallow. Though I’ve always known that much.”     
  
—  
  
Kili fiddles with his father’s old camera, looking through the view finder and watching the light meter adjust. “Do you ever print your photos?” He asks, turning to capture Bilbo’s disapproving frown, adjusting the lens to focus.  
  
“No,” he says. He has a box of undeveloped film left stored below his bed with new rolls tucked in the bottom drawer of the fridge. He watches as Kili adjusts the aperture and holds the camera to his eye once more. “That’s a shame.”  
  
“It isn’t,” Bilbo assures him. He likes those memories left bound in spools of film, alongside his mother’s capped canisters, rolled tight. “I imagine I’m not a very good photographer, anyway. But you look like you know what you’re doing,” Bilbo says, a halfhearted attempt to change the subject.  
  
It works. Kili sets the camera back down on the coffee table. “Yeah,” he says finally. “I had a good teacher.”  
  
Bilbo never quite knows what to say in situations like these, so he stands and switches on the kettle, pulling two mugs from the cabinet and tea bags from the top shelf.  
  
“Remember the sugar,” Kili calls from the sitting room. Bilbo tends to add less and less each time, an attempt to ween Kili off his truly terrible taste in tea. He thinks he’s probably noticed though he never says a word.  
  
—  
  
Something in Kili’s voice sounds off as he recounts his most recent brush in with his early Greek philosophy professor, but he listens just the same. “Honestly,” he murmurs. “If she wants us to attend all the tutorials she shouldn’t schedule them for nine in the fucking morning.”  
  
“I’m fairly certain she has no control over that.” He packs his bag with a flask of tea and a waterproof coat to sit on and reaches for his keys.  
  
“Nine in the morning, Bilbo. It’s practically inhumane.” He takes a deep breath. “Anyway. Can I come over?”  
  
“Not today,” Bilbo says, locking the door behind him. “I’m just heading off.”  
  
“Where’re you going?” His voice is soft, wavering, and Kili is anything but quiet.  
  
“Is everything alright?”  
  
“Not really,” he says.  
  
“Then meet me at the Leyton cemetery.”  
  
He looks just slightly more ragged than usual, with a thin coat and a long t-shirt to cover his black skinny jeans. “Christ, Kili,” Bilbo says, unwinding his knit scarf and handing it to him. “You’re going to freeze in that. Come on.”

His chunky beige scarf looks out of place at Kili’s throat but he tucks his nose into it regardless, murmuring “Thank you,” into the wool.    
  
“Who do you visit?” He asks, following Bilbo along the path.  
  
“Most of my family. We have enough generations buried here to remember when it was still swamp land.”  
  
Kili stands before the grave as Bilbo lays out his jacket and says, “He died a long time ago. I was just a kid.” He motions for him to sit and opens up his thermos, filling the cap with tea and handing it over to Kili. “But my mother brought me here nearly every week, so it just kind of became tradition, I suppose.”  
  
“Where is she now?” He inhales the steam, his eyes closed.  
  
“Scattered over a beach in Cornwall. She would’ve killed me if I let her stay in a place like this.” Kili’s fingers trace patterns in the dirt and Bilbo pats his knee. “What is it you’re really here to tell me?”  
  
“Fili’s coming home.”  
  
“Ah.” He leans back and Kili sips at his tea and finally Bilbo asks, “For how long?”  
  
“Two weeks. It’s not for- he won’t be back for a few months yet, but I didn’t exactly expect him to be back at all. My uncle told me this morning, thought I would be delighted.”  
  
“But you’re not.”  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
“Tell me about your brother.” He says and this time Kili does.  
  
He has blonde hair, the only one in the family, born with paper white curls that faded to gold as he got older. He wore it long enough to tie up into messy buns, he carried hard bound notebooks to class in a sea of laptops, he would wake each morning and wrap himself in one of Kili’s scarves stolen from his wardrobe, insisting it smelled like him though Kili could never smell anything at all.  
  
“Mum was the head of the French sector, our uncle ran the London office so we grew up with house parents in boarding school and au pairs and nannies that changed with each season so really all we had was each other and we preferred it that way.” The room he sleeps in now, sparse and spartan, was once used for nothing but book cases. The room they shared as teenagers remains behind a closed door, along with childhood trophies and film posters and art projects.  
  
They attended the same university for two years while Fili completed his master’s degree and trudged through solicitor’s training. They waited for each other outside lecture halls, bringing coffee cups with their names written in black ink across the sides, and would sit on the steps to the old refectory wondering what life was like for the students who woke each morning and walked to class alone.  
  
“We didn’t get along with other kids, not really. I mean we liked them alright, but we preferred to be on our own. Our house parents in Leicester kept telling my uncle we needed therapy because we ignored the boys in the house. So we started pretending, at least a bit, to be interested in other people. By the time we moved back to London Fili stopped pretending altogether but I got used to having friends. Sometimes he’d come out with me, do proper uni stuff you know, pub crawls and that with my mates, but I knew he just did it to keep me happy.”

Their synchronised lives were thrown off time by the gear of Fili’s ambition, something Kili has always rather lacked unless it extended to the tips of his brother’s fingers, the colour of his eyes.

“He applied for civil service and we talked about moving to York or to Edinburgh or Belfast when he got his placement. But instead they offered him FCO, and he took it.” Kili looks away. “That fucking bastard took it, and now he lives in goddamn Beirut and Christ, Bilbo, I wish I could hate him for it.”  
  
“It’s an amazing opportunity,” Bilbo says. His tea has gone cold and his fingers are numb but he has the feeling Kili hasn’t ever said any of this out loud. “And it’s not forever.”  
  
“It could be,” he whispers. “And honestly I thought- I thought he would get there and he would feel like this, like I do. I thought for sure he would ask to be transferred to domestic within weeks. But my cousins say he’s happy there, that it suits him.” Bilbo wonders how often he has lingered over those words, heartbroken and bitter.  
  
“Didn’t you know,” he begins, his voice soft. “Didn’t you know that one day you two would have to separate? At the very least when you met someone? When you needed your own space, got married, had kids, did all the things normal people do?”  
  
Kili turns to him with glassy eyes and says, “I never wanted anything else. Not one thing. And for twenty years I thought he felt the same.”  
  
“You’re sure he doesn’t?”  
  
“He must not,” Kili says. “Because he left.”  
  
—  
  
The next time he visits his parents there are flowers left in the grass, pressed back against the gravestone. They are yellow and white daffodils, plain and wilting. They’ve been there for days, maybe longer, and Bilbo sets them aside as he lays out his jacket. He sits back against his father’s grave and plucks a faded petal, absentmindedly rubbing his fingers along the edge.  
  
“Who’s been to see you?” He asks, watching the tube meander past. Bilbo has aunts and uncles and cousins enough to fill a small book but not a single one left in Leyton. As vast and spread out as they are, he can’t imagine any would think to visit.  
  
He takes a single photo of the flowers with their drooping stems and curled petals and the wet winter grass that surrounds them. His mother would call it kind, his father might say it's curious, and Bilbo takes another petal to tuck into his pocket.  
  
—  
  
“Please,” Kili says. He is sitting in the chair across from his desk, his palms flat on his thighs, his eyes focused. “I know I can do this.”  
  
Bilbo is rather certain he could do it as well, but it’s not ambition that drives him, nor is it a desire to prove himself. Bilbo knows distraction when he sees it. “The amount of work that goes into managing-"  
  
“I know how much work it is, Dori’s been training me and besides, I do most of the organisation anyway and I’ve been handling the final proof on the guest lists for months. Come on, give me this one chance.” He won’t need a chance, he’ll need a showcase. Kili will do beautifully and they both know it.  
  
“What if this affects your school work?”  
  
“It won’t,” Kili promises. “I have no assignments due for the next two months, the worst of it is over until exams.”  
  
“The next fundraiser is planned for April. Won’t you have certain family obligations to attend to in April?” Bilbo asks and Kili looks away.  
  
“Come on, Bilbo.” He whispers. “I need this. I’m good at this.” What he needs is an excuse to be away from home, away from his brother, for hours at a time, and Bilbo is already rather bad at denying him anything at all.  
  
“Fine,” he says and Kili lights up like he always does until Bilbo holds up a hand. “But there are conditions. First, if I begin to suspect you’re skipping lectures I’m pulling you out.”  
  
“I won’t skip a single one,” he says. “Which will be a significant improvement on what I’m currently doing.”  
  
Bilbo does his best to ignore him. “And second, when your brother gets here and the event is over, you two need to sit down and talk. You need to actually listen for once without hating him for getting on with his life.”  
  
“I don’t hate him,” Kili mumbles against his palm. “Also you’ve never even met him and this sounds suspiciously like you’re taking his side.”  
  
“I’m taking your side, you relentless brat. And I can tell you’re miserable. So I’ll give you lead on the next event. All the planning, all the delegations, go to you. But afterwards you try and make things right with Fili.”  
  
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll try.”  
  
“Good. Now go, it’s your lunch break.” As he watches Kili close the door behind him, Bilbo wonders if he hasn’t made a rather terrible mistake.  
  
—  
  
The flowers are never fresh on a Sunday. By then they are already torn by the wind and frosted over in the mornings but they are always there, in little tied bouquets from a local flower shop, bunches of whites and purples and reds. Bilbo sighs and shakes his head and takes a fading petal from each set, pressing them between the pages of his mother’s favourite cookbook.  
  
Kili is prowling his office while he waits for Bilbo to get off the phone, running his fingers along the spines of binders, term reports and spreadsheets. He pauses over the picture frames, photos of Frodo and Primula, Drogo scowling at the lens.  
  
“Finally,” Kili breathes, as Bilbo hangs up the phone. “I need you to sign off of on the hall for the seventeenth. I’m aiming for Barbican.”  
  
He barely glances over the specifics, knowing that Kili has already visited the location himself and picked through all of the details that he would never think to enquire after. He hands it back with a smile, adjusting his glasses. “Quick question.” Kili’s fingers tap at his side, filled with restless energy. “You don’t happen to visit the cemetery all that often, do you?”  
  
Kili frowns. “No. Haven’t been since I went with you.”  
  
“Right.”  
  
“Why?” He asks.  
  
“Someone’s been leaving flowers at my father’s grave.”  
  
Kili sits on the edge of his desk. “Can’t be extended family or something?”  
  
“Not that I know of.”  
  
“Maybe one of his friends? Old people don’t have much to do and they are usually the ones cleaning up cemeteries. Bit depressing, if you ask me. Kind of like foreshadowing.”  
  
Bilbo snorts and shakes his head. “Get back to work you absolute monster.”  
  
Kili blows him a kiss before he shuts the door behind him.  
  
—  
  
Kili starts spending the night in Bilbo’s flat, commandeering the guest bedroom, leaving his laptop open to email lists and spreadsheets. Half the time he falls asleep on the couch, his faced pressed into a throw pillow with his feet dangling off the edge. They make each other milky cups of tea and coffee with too much sugar. Bilbo throws together pasta bakes with whatever he has left in the cabinet and Kili orders takeout on the nights they get in late. He doesn’t have the heart to send him home, not yet.  
  
“When does his flight get in?” Bilbo asks as he flips through the channels, deciding on one of David Attenborough’s many wildlife documentaries.  
  
“Next Thursday,” he says, snatching the remote from his hand and changing it to an old seventies rerun of University Challenge.  
  
“You can stay until Saturday morning,” he says. “Then you have to go see him. Did you let him know you wouldn’t be home?”  
  
“I’ll leave a note,” Kili says and Bilbo sighs, resigning himself to the static chatter of the television. When Bamber Gascoigne asks the origin of the word Wednesday, Kili murmurs a soft “Woden” at his side.

“Woden is correct,” Bamber echoes and Kili leans against his shoulder.

“I’d rather he didn’t come home at all. Now I just have to watch him leave again.”

Bilbo doesn’t have siblings, so he hardly understands the sentiment. Though the way Kili’s eyes glaze over at the mention of his name, Bilbo suspects he wouldn’t understand it anyway. This is something altogether outside his realm of experience, outside of his Christmas dinners and occasional visits home. “I’m sorry,” he tells him, because there is very little else for him to say.  
  
“Caligula,” Kili mumbles as the buzzers sound on the television.  
  
“Caligula is correct,” Bamber says. “Next question.”  
  
—  
  
“I’m heading off early,” he says, poking his head into the storage room that has recently been repurposed into an office for Kili to turn into a minor disaster zone. He may fit in among the men in Whitehall, in the towers of Clifford Chance, but Bilbo thinks he looks best in his rumpled shirt and frizzy hair, reading through donation sheets and crossing off names on two tier lists. He plans to offer him the job formally at the auction, on the condition that he still graduates in July. It’s a secret he holds to his chest and makes him smile as he watches Kili chew on the cap of his pen.     
  
He glances up, his eyes shine gold in the yellow lamplight. “Where’re you headed?”  
  
“To the cemetery, before it gets properly dark.”  
  
Kili grins. “After the mysterious flower man, are you?”  
  
“You don’t know it’s a man,” he says. “But yes, that’s exactly who I’m after. They’re never there on a Sunday, so I’m giving Wednesday a shot.”  
  
“Good luck. Hope it’s not a serial killer.”  
  
“You’d better.” He tells him. “Otherwise you’ll be out of a job.”  
  
“Nah, I’d find a way. Everyone here likes me better than you.”  
  
“Watch it,” Bilbo says, but he can’t bite back his smile.  
  
“I’ll see you at home,” Kili calls after him. “Don’t be late for curfew, young man!”  
  
There are no flowers at his father’s grave, new or wilted, so he stays until dusk settles, humming old songs with words he can barely remember. Once the trains turn more frequent as rush hour picks up he stands, stretching his arms above his head, and says goodbye with a touch to the stone.  
  
—  
  
Kili spends the first hour running around the Barbican Centre in polished Oxford shoes and a new suit, tying loose ends and whispering quick instructions to the wait staff. When Bilbo finally gets a hold of him, his hair is in disarray and he’s slightly out of breath. He shoves a glass of champagne into his hand and says, “Drink.”  
  
“I have to ask Dori to-“  
  
“Kili,” he says, smiling. “Calm down. It’s perfect. Everything is perfect. Now drink up.” He clinks their glasses together. “We’re celebrating.”  
  
“Don’t count your chickens,” he says with a smile, smoothing back his mess of curls. “The evening has barely started.”  
  
“That’s not what we’re celebrating.” Bilbo hands him a business card, simple beige stock with his name written in embossed ink.  
  
“Head of events and development,” Kili reads. “But that’s-"  
  
“Dori wants more time to spend with his family, and we think you’re perfect. I still expect you to graduate mind, I want that diploma framed in your office come August.”  
  
Kili hugs him so tightly that they both slosh champagne onto the carpet and Kili’s laugh has turned somewhat hysterical as he wipes tears from his eyes. “You didn’t even properly ask me.”  
  
“I don’t really feel the need.” They set their glasses down and Kili inspects his business card and shakes his head with the ghost of a grin at his lips and finally he says, “You know, a lot of bets were traded in my family on whether or not I’d have to work retail.”  
  
Bilbo pats him on the back. “You’re working charity, Kili. It’s not going to be that much better. But if it counts for anything, I am so very proud of you.” He turns, reaching for another glass but Kili stops him, clutching at his arm, his fingers digging into his skin. Bilbo follows his eye line, the pale movement of his lips, until he catches sight of the man stepping through the door.  
  
His hair is parted at the side, a wave of curls held in place with product, sheared and neatly trimmed at his nape. His suit is fitted and his skin is tanned with freckles dotting his cheekbones and red woven strings lining his wrist. He hands his coat off to the waitstaff and stands in the doorway, glancing around the ballroom.  
  
He sees the exact moment he finds Kili’s face in the crowd. His eyes light up, he mouths his name, a whispered gasp, and makes his way through the sea of guests until he’s close enough for Bilbo to shove Kili forward with a subtly placed hand to his lower back. Fili pulls him into a hug with one of Kili’s hands still stuck in his pocket. He is clutching at his shoulders with long fingers, piano player’s hands, Kili had called them.  
  
He can see it now, the family resemblance, in the way that Fili’s eyes crinkle as he smiles and the curving slope of his nose. Fili holds him at arm’s length, looking him up and down while the words that tumble from his lips are lost to Bilbo in the echoing hum of chatter. Kili clutches at his wrists like a lifeline, responds in rushed sentences before jerking his head in Bilbo’s direction. He takes his cue for what it is.  
  
“Hello,” he says, walking over to them and holding out a hand. “My name is Bilbo Baggins. You must be Fili.” His grip is firm but his smile is strained and were it not for Kili’s darting eyes he would leave them be.  
  
“Mr. Baggins, I cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for Kili.” It must come as second nature, speaking for his brother, making sure to pick up the words that may fall between the gaps of Kili’s teeth.    
  
“I haven’t a clue what you mean,” Bilbo says. “Kili has all but saved my sanity these past few months. He’s absolutely invaluable and not just because he knows how to throw a party. We’ve always been rather useless at this bit, to be honest, and it’s one of our more crucial functions. Nothing brings in the money quite like intoxicated investment bankers. If you’ll excuse us for just a moment, I do have one rather important thing to discuss with him and then I assure you, he’s yours for the evening.”  
  
Kili murmurs his apologies in his brother’s ear before following Bilbo through the staff doors and into the halls leading to the service entrance. “Are you okay?” Bilbo asks.  
  
“Not at all. I thought this would buy me time and I wouldn’t-“ he sounds breathless, on the verge of a panic attack, so Bilbo takes his hands in his and lets him lean against the white washed drywall. “Balin must have sold me out, my uncle has no idea.”  
  
“You were going to see him in the morning anyway, remember?”  
  
“Yeah,” he gasps. “But it wasn’t now.”  
  
“Calm down. This isn’t the disaster you think it is. Go introduce him to some of the staff, walk him around, explain what we do. And then for fuck’s sake go home with him, Kili. Talk to him. He’s clearly missed you and I know you’ve missed him. Don’t ruin this.”  
  
“I’ve already ruined it,” he whispers, staring at the opposite wall.  
  
“Don’t be silly. Come on.” He pulls him forward and dusts off the back of his jacket. “Everything will be fine. And if it isn’t, you know where I live.”  
  
—  
  
Since the day Bilbo found him crying near the cemetery gates, Kili hasn’t gone more than a handful of hours without his constant flood of communication. He texts with unreasonably nimble fingers and leaves voice messages by the dozens. He calls and emails and stops by with crumb cake from the market near his flat. He crashes in his guest bedroom, sits on the edge of his desk until the offices close, invites him for coffee outside Warren Street. Kili is constant undying energy, and Bilbo has learned to love him for it.  
  
He spends his weekend tallying sales from the charity auction and doing a bit of windowsill gardening and it isn’t until he returns to work on Monday that he realises he hasn’t heard from Kili in three days.    
  
“I gave him a half week,” Dori says. “He called first thing this morning. Said he was sick. Like I don’t know a lie when I hear one. But poor kid has worked noon and night for weeks so I thought he deserved a break.”  
  
“Yeah,” Bilbo agrees. “He does.”  
  
“By the way, you never told me. Did he accept the job?”  
  
Bilbo grins as he recalls the way Kili’s fingers brushed over the letters of his business card.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “He did. So I will finally accept your retirement with all the grace and understanding of an old friend, but only if you agree to stay long enough to settle him in.”  
  
“Wouldn’t dream of leaving a minute before,” he says.  
  
Bilbo sends Kili an email, brief and to the point. He tells him he’s proud of him, to enjoy his day off and to call if he needs anything at all. He doesn’t respond and Bilbo doesn’t expect that he will.  
  
—  
  
No matter how often Bilbo tries to vary his visits to the cemetery he never manages to catch the flowers in time. Sometimes he visits before there’s any flowers at all and other times they’re days old, sometimes only hours. He thinks it’s unlikely that their schedules will ever match up, so today he tapes a note to a faded yellow petal and sticks it against the edge of his father’s gravestone. _Thank you for the flowers_ , he writes in a flash of green ink pen. He signs his name and hopes that they will see it before it rains. He knows it’s unlikely, but he likes to pretend there’s a chance.  
  
—  
  
Wednesday rolls around and Kili hasn’t come to work. Bilbo sits at his desk, tapping a pen against his blotter, and wonders if he should be worried. He forces himself to stand and seek out Dori who is currently digging through a drawer of paper supplies in the front office. He knocks lightly on the doorframe before asking, “Have you heard from Kili at all today?”  
  
“Not a peep. I thought maybe he’d spoken to you. He was supposed to be in at nine, you know,” he says. “It’s not like him.”  
  
He sends a quick text and busies himself for an hour or two while preparing for the monthly board meeting, but finally his eyes wander to the clock and Bilbo reaches for his phone. It goes straight to voicemail. He listens as a recording babbles his instructions and the tone sounds in his ear. “I’m coming to check on you after work,” he says. “No one’s heard from you since Monday, and we haven’t spoken since Friday night. You do know I worry.” He sighs down the receiver. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”  
  
It rains as he walks from Bethnal Green station down toward Victoria Park. His note will be nothing but smudged green ink and he can’t quite bring himself to care. The street lights flicker on as he nears Zealand Road, with its little brick homes and their white carved trim. He climbs the steps to Kili’s door and peaks over the railing and into his front window. The heavy blackout curtains are pulled closed but through the gap he can see a flicker of blue light, a television left on. He calls Kili’s name as he knocks but he doesn’t answer, so Bilbo digs out his keys. The door creeks as he pushes it open, but he hears nothing except for the quiet muted chatter of the television in the sitting room.  
  
He finds them asleep on the high backed antique sofa, the cushions all pushed to the floor. They are pressed against each other, Kili’s head resting at his collarbone and Fili’s arms pulled tight around his shoulders. He is no longer the slicked back professional bureaucrat that he had seen at the auction. His hair is curled, falling into his eyes, his shoulders are lightly freckled and his lashes dust his skin with gold and in the glow of the television screen they look etherial, Botticelli angels, bare except for their single white sheet.  
  
He steps back from the doorway and the full picture comes swimming into focus. A blue silk dressing gown is tossed over the carved mahogany edge of the couch. He spots Kili’s shoes kicked into the corner, the remnants of Friday’s suit left in pieces around the floor, his tie just steps from the entrance. Familiar takeout bags are tucked under the French end table and tissues litter the hardwood. He sees little torn foil packets, condoms tied and tossed near the rubbish pile of leftovers.     
  
The pieces fall into place like stones in Saint Patrick’s mended rock wall and Bilbo sees Kili’s broken heart for what it truly is. He leaves them asleep, curled against each other in the low light like the star crowned twins, and locks the door on his way out.  
  
It is dark as he walks back to the station but the sky is still a polluted hazy orange. Bilbo pauses by a church with red stained glass windows while he digs for his phone. “Something came up,” he says, leaning back against the wrought iron gate. “I won’t be able to make it to your flat after all, I’m stuck in preparations for the board of director’s meeting. But you’d better charge your damn mobile and call me when you get a chance. I imagine I’d have been notified if you’d died horribly in the last five days, so I’ll forgive this little bout of radio silence so long as I hear from you before the week is done.”  
  
—  
  
Bilbo opens his front door to Kili wringing his hands together, frowning down at his shoes. He’s wearing a heavy beige cardigan that Bilbo doesn’t recognise and he’s pulled the top of his hair back into a bun, leaving the rest in unwashed curls along his shoulders. There are smudges of dark below his eyes, from too much sleep or too little, Bilbo isn’t sure.  
  
“I’m so, so sorry,” he whispers, without looking up. “I- would you believe me if I told you I lost track of what day it was?”  
  
Bilbo smiles, despite himself. “Maybe,” he says. “Come in. I just put the kettle on.”  
  
Kili toes off his shoes with less complaining than usual and follows Bilbo into the kitchen. “Is Dori furious?”  
  
“I told him you had the flu.”  
  
“Yeah, well.” Kili pulls out a chair and sits with his knees tucked to his chin. He looks so young, with his sleeves falling over the edges of his knuckles and his hair grown too long. Sometimes Bilbo forgets what it was like to be twenty-one. “I told him the same thing and he sounded ready to call bullshit on me.”  
  
“He has little brothers,” Bilbo reminds him. “He knows a lie when he hears it. He believed me though. He doesn’t expect you in until next week.” He sets a mug in front of Kili, milky tea with a heaping spoon of sugar, and sits across from him. “I’m guessing you haven’t been attending classes, either.”  
  
He bites at his lips. “Not really. But I mean most of them are useless now anyway. It’s just my dissertation left.”  
  
“Which I know for a fact you haven’t written a word of.”  
  
“I have time, Dad, don’t worry.” He says with a bit of a smile and Bilbo rolls his eyes.    
  
They sip their tea in silence and Bilbo thrusts a plateful of chocolate digestives in Kili’s direction, watching as he nibbles at the edges. “Do you want to talk about it?” He asks, finally.  
  
Kili smiles down at his mug. “We did alright,” he said. “We fell back into things, it was like he never left. But it doesn’t really matter, does it? Because he’s just going to leave again and then I’ll have to start from scratch. I thought I was doing well, I mean- I was working, I liked working, but then Fili gets here and everything falls apart and I’m sorry Bilbo, I really am. You were so kind to offer me that job and then I repaid you by-“  
  
Bilbo cuts him off, reaching out to rest a hand on his forearm. “Hush, Kili. You know I don’t think any less of you for skiving. Honestly, I expected you’d call out every other day when I first agreed to sign you on for work experience. But you’ve been brilliant. You deserved a week off.”    
  
“It wouldn’t just be a week,” he says softly. “If Fili stayed I’d slip back into this, I know I would, because when he’s around I can’t think of a single thing but him. He’s not that way, you know. He did so well in school, so well with all of his part-time jobs and volunteering and work placements. It’s just me who can’t handle it.”  
  
“How long is he here?”  
  
“Until next Saturday.” His breath hitches, like the thought alone could collapse his lungs.  
  
“Then you can start by coming into work on Monday. You can leave a few hours early each day, but at least come in. Go to all of your classes and I’m sure Fili wouldn’t be opposed to meeting you outside lecture halls. You can spend your afternoons together, you can bring him into the offices, show him around.”  
  
“Okay,” Kili murmurs around the rim of his mug. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“You have nothing to apologise for.” He watches him sip at his tea and he thinks that perhaps he loves Kili as much as he loves his hoard of badly behaved little cousins, as much as Frodo with his wide blue eyes, and Drogo and his signature scowl. He wishes more than anything that he had stayed at the office on Wednesday evening because Kili’s secrets weigh on his chest like slabs of rock. Bilbo finishes his tea and moves to set his dishes in the sink, running his fingers through Kili’s knotted hair as he passes.  
  
—  
  
Bilbo visits the cemetery on a chilly Sunday morning and finds his note is gone along with the wilted yellow flowers. In their place are three white lilies with dusted pink petals and he thinks it must be nearly spring. It never gets quite cold enough in London for the grass to wilt and dry like the garden at his grandparents’ estate in Yorkshire, so the ground is a vibrant, lively green but the sky is still endless white overhang.  
  
Bilbo picks up a lily, leans back against the stone and for once he doesn’t think of his parents, he doesn’t try to remember his father’s voice, doesn’t close his eyes to his mother’s laughter. Instead he thinks about Kili and the way his fingers looked splayed out over his brother’s collarbone, he thinks about his startling laugh and his red rimmed eyes and the blonde boys he brings home from Farringdon.  
  
He wonders how it started but more importantly he wonders how it will end. Fili loves him, he could see it in his eyes, lit by the low lights of the Barbican Centre, but he thinks of Kili’s restless hands and how easily he swallows tequila straight from the bottle and he desperately hopes it will be enough.  
  
—  
  
Fili wears light blue jeans, ripped to match, and a military issue parka with one of Kili’s knit beanies pulled down over his ears. Kili steers him through the office in his button down and brogues, introducing him with all the flare and cheery laughter that his colleagues have come to expect from him. Bilbo watches through his office windows as Fili shakes hands with Dori, smiling at something he says, and begins to collect his things.  
  
“I hope you don’t mind,” Bilbo says, standing as they shuffle closer to his door. “Lunch will be a bit of a walk. I thought we might head down to Regent’s Park.”  
  
“You never take me to Regent’s,” Kili says with a frown.  
  
“Special occasions only, Kili. And I see you every day.” Fili laughs and it startles him how similar they sound, like a recording from an old set of speakers, just the slightest bit off in pitch.  
  
“It’s nice to see you again, Mr. Baggins.”  
  
“Bilbo, please,” he says, shrugging on his coat. “I’ve heard so much about you I feel as if you’re already family. Now come along, we have a reservation to keep.” It’s not quite true, of course, because Kili had cauterised the wound of his brother’s absence by pretending he didn’t exist. But Kili looks at him like a disciple from a Renaissance painting, and for now that tells him enough.  
  
“May I ask how you two met?” Fili says as he zips up his parka against the wind.  
  
Kili opens his mouth and he can already see the lie forming on his tongue, so Bilbo cuts in and says, “I was visiting my parents’ grave and Kili happened to be passing by. We got to talking and I learned he was a terrible gossip. Needless to say, I decided to keep him around.” Kili scoffs but he looks thankful all the same.  
  
“In Bethnal Green?” Fili asks, glancing at his brother.  
  
“Leyton,” Bilbo says.  
  
Kili nudges Fili’s side with his shoulder as they walk, catching his attention before saying, “it’s where they buried Thror.”  
  
“Who?” Bilbo asks, before he can stop himself.  
  
“Our great-grandfather,” Kili says. “We didn’t- uh, we weren’t close.” There is more to the story, Bilbo is sure of it, something hidden in the sudden, tense line of Fili’s jaw, in the way Kili hunches over, staring at the ground. “Anyway, that’s just about it. We got on, became friends, and then I asked Bilbo for work experience and it turns out I wasn’t totally rubbish at it. Grandmother’s awful Christmas dinners did teach me something after all.”  
  
“Manipulation,” Fili says with a smile.  
  
“Flattery,” he agrees.  
  
“Whatever it is, we’re all terribly thankful for it.”  
  
Fili, like his brother, is a wonderful conversationalist. They discuss their most recent projects and he listens as often as he speaks, offering small insights and perspectives into regional conflicts and government aid schemes. Kili grumbles over their shared interests so their topics turn to the fall of Camden Town, facts which Kili recites from _A History of London_ , the book which sat on Bilbo’s shelf for nearly his entire life, though Kili was the only one to ever read it.  
  
When Fili talks about Beirut, Kili looks away, gazing up at the trees of Regent’s Park, his hands bunched into his coat pockets. Fili describes the sea, the smell of salt water and brine. There is noise, constant and comforting, in the evenings he listens to the call to prayer from his balcony and he wakes to church bells. He talks of humid mornings and coffee brewed with cloves and bits of French infused Arabic that he practices over and over again in front of a mirror.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” he says. He repeats it like a conviction. “It’s beautiful.”  
  
Kili swallows hard and looks up at the sky. “More beautiful than London?” He asks.  
  
Fili watches him from the corner of his eye. “It’s brighter,” he says. “And when it rains, it rains in ernest. But no, Kee. It’ll never be more beautiful than London.”  
  
—  
  
Kili sits at his desk with a pen balanced between his fingers, his chin rested on his hand, and stares up at the clock. Bilbo leans in the doorway as Kili’s eyes follow the second hand, dragging along like only time can manage. Finally he clears his throat and Kili’s elbow slips from the desk. “Christ, Bilbo. No need to sneak up on me like that.”  
  
“Go home, Kili,” he says.  
  
“It’s no where near time.” Kili smiles and looks away. “I would know.”  
  
Bilbo closes the office door and sits on the desk at Kili’s side. “You’re no use to me like this.”  
  
“Then I won’t be much use to you at all, soon.”  
  
“Good thing I don’t just keep you around for your utility then, isn’t it?” Kili leans forward and rests his forehead against Bilbo’s thigh, sighing as he runs his fingers through his hair. It’s down today, a rare thing since Fili has been home and Bilbo is beginning to think the length rather suits him. “Kili,” he begins, tucking a stray curl behind his ear. “Can I ask you a question?”  
  
Kili sits back, watching him with glassy eyes and Bilbo thinks he already knows what he wants to ask. “Are you in love with your brother?”  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I am.”  
  
“Then go home,” Bilbo says. “Go out to lunch, spend the evening together. Don’t come in tomorrow.”  
  
Kili’s chin is tucked against his chest, his fingers clasped around Bilbo’s sleeve. “I wish you’d been my uncle instead, you know. I wouldn’t have turned out this way. I’d still love him,” he adds. “I’d always love him. But maybe I could be like him, maybe I could have a life outside of this and Bilbo, I know I would’ve been so different if I had you.”  
  
“Then I’m glad you didn’t,” Bilbo says, pressing a kiss to the top of his head. “Because I’m rather fond of you as you are. And besides, you have me now.” He’s not sure if it’ll be enough, if he can do anything at all to numb the pain that will come with Fili’s return to Beirut but he will certainly try.  
  
—  
  
Bilbo spends Friday morning delegating, handing off tasks and ticking off checklists and he heads home just before noon to pack his little canvas bag with sandwiches and tea and a worn paperback. London’s short gusts of spring weather have fallen in his favour and for once the sky above the cemetery gates is blue with a hazy stretch of orange and when he raises his camera to his eye he can’t quite bring himself to press the shutter. He drops his bag and turns in slow circles, watching the world through the mirrored glass of his worn old lens.  
  
He sits back against his father’s headstone and closes his eyes to the yellow glare of the sun and he wishes this afternoon would last forever. He wishes Kili could remain by Fili’s side, sprawled together along swaths of white sheets, frozen like oil paintings with their lips against each other’s skin, Fili’s fingers entwined in the black curls of his hair and Kili’s eyelashes shadows against his brother’s collarbone.  
  
He wishes he could spend forever sitting on the thawed soil, fingers pulling at patches of thickening grass, and enjoy the sunlight, the clanking of the tube, the whistling pair of magpies. He wishes the echo of his mother’s voice would always be this clear, that his memories of her won’t fade like the ones of his father, won’t turn like yellowed newspaper.  
  
Bilbo knows well enough by now that the world waits for no one, so hours later, when the sun begins to set he raises his camera to his eye and he takes a photo. Through the view finder, he sees a man step through the gates, skinny and slight, his shoulders hunched and his fingers wrapped around a familiar bouquet of flowers.  
  
He slowly lowers his camera and watches the young man was he walks along the trail, staring at the ground, ridged straight fringe falling into his eyes. “Hello there,” Bilbo says, smiling at the startled expression on his face when he realises there is someone sitting at the graves.  
  
“Oh,” he says, his voice a high, shaky thing. “Oh I’m so very sorry, I didn’t expect anyone to be here.”  
  
“You’re the one who brings the flowers?” He asks. He doesn’t recognise him. He certainly doesn’t look like a Baggins, though one can never be sure with his father’s family.  
  
“No, actually, not me. Not directly. I’m a personal assistant and sometimes, when my boss is gone, he asks me to bring them instead. He’s away this weekend, so-” he gestures awkwardly with the flowers.  
  
“Well thank you,” he says. “For bringing them if not for the thought. What’s you name?”  
  
“Ori,” he says. “I really am sorry to disturb you.”  
  
“Not at all,” he says. “May I ask the name of your boss? It’s just, I’m the last of my family here and I can’t imagine anyone who would wish to visit my parents so religiously. If you think he wouldn’t mind, that is.”  
  
“I can’t imagine why he would,” Ori says, laying the flowers gently at his side. They are pink today, a mix of red petals and magenta speckles and Bilbo waits for his answer. “I work for Thorin Durin.”  
  
“Oh,” Bilbo says. “Well thank you. I appreciate it. It’s getting late and I’m sure you’d like to head home. Thank you again for delivering them.”  
  
“You should head home too,” Ori tells him as he turns down the path. “It’s getting cold, now that the sun has gone down.”  
  
“I will. And Ori,” he calls after him. “If you get a chance, tell Thorin I appreciate the flowers.” Ori shouts his promise and Bilbo watches him leave, a silhouette at dusk.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My intentions were a lot more expansive with this fic but I just got really lazy and also writing is hard.

Bilbo doesn’t know how to mend a broken heart, so instead when Kili shows up at his door with tear stained cheeks and knotted hair he let’s him cry into the crook of his neck, traces patterns on his back like he would for Frodo after a mid-winter nightmare, and tells him everything will be okay. Kili doesn’t believe him, he even tells him so, but Bilbo says it anyway. He keeps saying it until he falls asleep on the couch, his eyes swollen and red and his hands tucked beneath his cheek.  
  
They spend the weekend watching University Challenge, distracting themselves with trivia on chemical discoveries and Roman military history. Bilbo cooks a full roast with his mother’s recipe and makes Kili help him chop carrots into haphazard little pieces. The taste of rosemary reminds him of rainy afternoons and blanket forts, but Kili has no memories of his own mother’s cooking.  
  
“How’re you so okay with this?” Kili asks. His frequent crying spells have been replaced with stony silence and distant stares and Bilbo isn’t sure which is worse. “You’ve not asked me a single question about it.”  
  
“I don’t know,” Bilbo says. “Maybe if the circumstances were different, I’d be more concerned.” He’s not sure what exactly those circumstances would be. Maybe if he hadn’t seen Kili that morning, crying into his hands outside a mausoleum door, or if he hadn’t found them asleep, curled against each other with their breathing timed to a metronome’s beat. Maybe if Bilbo had siblings of his own, if he had some basis for comparison, or if he’d known them as children, if Kili didn’t look at his brother like he swallowed the sun.  
  
“How old were you?” He asks, dreading the answer.  
  
“When we fell in love? We always have been, it’s not- if you mean sex I didn’t even consider bringing it up until my eighteenth birthday. I knew he’d fight me on it, so I just waited until he didn’t have an excuse.”  
  
“Well,” Bilbo begins and Kili laughs.  
  
“You know what I mean. A proper excuse.”  
  
“Weren’t you afraid of what would happen with your family, if they found out?”  
  
“No,” Kili answers, immediate and certain. “I could do without the lot, to be perfectly honest. Fili has always been closer with them than I have, he talks to Dis more often, was always Thorin’s golden boy. He gets on with our cousins and uncles. But I don’t need them, not really.”  
  
“You need someone,” Bilbo says, frowning. He thinks of Kili, alone on the beach of Majorca while snow fell outside his window in Yorkshire.  
  
“Well,” he mumbles, reaching for the remote. “I’ve got you, haven’t I?”  
  
“You know you do.” Bilbo stands and shuffles into the kitchen to make them both tea as Bamber Gascoigne’s voice echoes from the living room.  
   
—  
  
They lay with their feet entwined along opposite ends of the couch while Bilbo reads printed proposals on stapled sheets of white paper and Kili reads his own on a computer screen. “Kili,” he says and he looks up, watching up.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
“Your uncle was the one leaving flowers at my parent’s grave. Did you know?”  
  
Kili frowns, slowly reaching out to close the lid of his laptop. “No,” he says, his voice still hoarse, not quite natural. “You’re sure?”  
  
“I spent a good deal of time there last Friday and a young man named Ori came by with flowers from Thorin Durin.”  
  
“What a bastard,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Should’ve known the second you said it. No way he’d venture out to do any work on his own. It had to be Ori. Did he say why?”  
  
“No. I’ve never met your uncle, have I?”  
  
“Not that I know of. He hasn’t been to any of our events. I’ll ask what the deal with the flowers is.”  
  
“Don’t ask your uncle,” he says, suddenly quite flustered.  
  
“I’ll ask Ori. He’s a better listener than he’s generally given credit for. I’ll report back.” He pauses to run a hand through his greasy hair. “Sorry about all this, he’s so weird. He probably recognised the names, to be honest. He knows I’ve been spending all this time with you and he probably saw the graves and did the math. How that equation came out to stalking you with his creepy flowers, I can’t say.”  
  
“What would your uncle be doing at Saint Patrick’s?”  
  
“Oh, he owns it now. Because when Thorin doesn’t know what to do he throws money at things. His grandfather asked to be buried in a place he’s never heard of, so he reserves the plot and then buys the whole damn cemetery.”  
  
“Oh,” he begins, softly. “Well, I suppose I have met your uncle then.”  
  
Kili frowns. “Really?”  
  
“He told me off for taking photographs. After proving to him that I was indeed visiting family he just kind of stormed off, but not before shouting over his shoulder that the place was under new management.”  
  
“Oh yeah,” Kili says with a snort. “You definitely met Thorin.”  
  
“Well he did apologise, in the end. Not that I would’ve needed one, mind.”  
  
Kili’s eyes are wide. “That- no, did he really? Like just on his own or did you have to badger him for it?”  
  
“He came out in the pouring rain mid-February to do it. He told me about his grandfather and that he has no kin in Leyton, but then I forgot to ask his name.”  
  
“Huh. Well that’s weird.”  
  
“Is it?”  
  
“Trust me,” he says, with the barest hint of a smile. “If you knew him like I do, you’d think so as well.”  
  
—  
  
“He visits on Friday’s, you know.” Kili hasn’t left his flat for more than two days at a time and Bilbo thinks he ought to be setting some ground rules. But Kili’s been improving, bit by bit, he’s seen the light return to his eyes and he can’t quite bring himself to make him leave. So he allows him to fill the wardrobe in his guest bedroom with clothes, allows him to buy groceries and leave his dirty dishes on the coffee table and commandeer the television remote with his quick fingers.  
  
“Who visits?”  
  
“Thorin. Ori told me the times vary because he never really leaves the office willingly, but it’s always Friday.”  
  
“Ah.” He pretends to be engrossed in his book.  
  
“So? Are you going to try and catch him in the act?”  
  
“You’re rather nosey.” Bilbo tells him and when Kili laughs it doesn’t sound quite right.  
  
That night he listens through the door as he calls his brother on Skype. “The connection isn’t any good here, Fee. Just turn off your camera, otherwise you’ll break up.” It’s a lie and Bilbo imagines Fili knows it. But Kili is trying, and that has to count for something.  
  
He stands with his ear against the wood as Fili does the heavy lifting and describes his day with a false note of cheer to his voice. He trudges through descriptions of the weather, balmy and warm, the humidity that comes from a storm at sea. He talks about his daily breakfast of manousheh bought from an old women with arthritis ridden fingers who works on the street side just below his building. It isn’t until he recounts his recent faux pas with an American diplomat that the static between them finally breaks. They both laugh and laugh and when Kili responds, he almost sounds normal again.  
  
Bilbo falls asleep that night to the distant hum of Kili’s voice and he dreams of rocky coasts and the rising tide.  
  
—  
  
Bilbo sees Thorin the second he walks through the cemetery gate, his shoulders hunched and his fingers clutching a bouquet of asters and daisies. Thorin looks up and sees him a few moments later and immediately turns on his heel, his head bent, and tries to leave without being spotted. Bilbo laughs and his voice carries across the field.  
  
“I’m afraid I’ve already seen you, Mr. Durin. No sense in wasting perfectly good flowers.” He calls, grinning. Thorin pauses, his collar turned up against his neck, but eventually he gives in, walking at a gallows pace to Bilbo’s side. He holds out the bouquet and Bilbo takes them, running his fingers along purple petals.  
  
“Thank you,” he says. “My parents would’ve loved them.” Thorin nods, looking away as Bilbo grins up at him. He shifts to the side, creating room on his blanket and motions for him to sit. “Well come on. You came all the way out here.” Thorin seems to hesitate so Bilbo pats the spot beside him and says, “Don’t overthink it.”  
  
Thorin sighs but he sits all the same. His long legs fold awkwardly in front of him and Bilbo smiles as the hem of his trench coat trails in the mud. His hands rest splayed across his knees and they sit in silence while Bilbo plucks a petal to tuck into his pocket, humming a few bars to a Cornish lullaby.  
  
“Kili’s doing alright,” he says, after a while. “He’s slowly getting back into a schedule and he even calls Fili most nights. He doesn’t worry about him you know, but goodness, I do. I can hardly watch the news these days.”  
  
“Beirut is not the war zone it was in the eighties.” He still hasn’t quite met his eye and Bilbo allows him his distance.  
  
“No, I suppose not. But I still worry.”  
  
“So do I,” he says, his voice soft.  
  
“I visit every Sunday, you know.” Bilbo tells him. “And I wouldn’t mind the company.”  
  
“I’m not always in London.”  
  
Thorin looks like a man who has had very few opportunities to speak, so Bilbo pats his arm and says, “well I am. I’ll be here if you ever have the time. If you ever need it, rather. There’s something relaxing about Leyton, you know.”  
  
“Yes,” he says quietly. “There certainly is.”  
  
—  
  
Most days they don’t speak. Thorin arrives with flowers and sits at his side, looking out over the graveyard as Bilbo plucks a petal to press alongside the rest. Sometimes Thorin closes his eyes to the glare of the spring skies and Bilbo takes the time to look at him. He sees a bit of Kili, on those days, in the way his lashes fan against his skin and how his hair falls to the side, brushing against his temples. But there are lines at his eyes that Kili lacks, his beard is flecked with grey and Bilbo thinks it’s all rather ridiculous but he usually cannot bring himself to look away. His eyes are all he has of Fili, stormy and sharp, their shared intelligence held in line by the filter that Kili so apparently lacks. He doesn’t mind Thorin’s silence, but when he speaks, Bilbo hears his voice for days.  
  
“Is he still staying with you?” He sounds tired, worn, and his eyes remain closed to the setting sun.  
  
“Weekends,” he says. “And Tuesday nights, often stays through Wednesday as well. I’m trying to set boundaries but your nephew is a rather talented negotiator.”  
  
“He is.” There is a twitch of movement at the corner of his lip. “If you want him to leave-“  
  
“Oh no,” Bilbo says. “I’m afraid I’m rather fond of him. Even if he never does the washing up.”  
  
“He’s very fond of you too,” he says. “And I can never thank you enough.”  
  
“I don’t know about that. I’ve received a rather startling amount of flowers from you, Mr. Durin.” He does smile then and Bilbo laughs, his head tiled back. “Did you know, that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile?”  
  
He looks startled, his eyes wide and reflected blue, and then he laughs as well.  
  
—  
  
“You’re right, I don’t understand.” Kili is not quiet on the best of days but now his voice carries, heavy with bitter desperation, through the halls of his flat. “You know they’d give you a properly good job here, maybe they’d even pay you more-“  
  
“It’s not about money.” His voice sighs static from Kili’s laptop and Bilbo moves closer to the guest bedroom, cup of tea in hand, but thinks better of interrupting. “You’re so young, Kee. Isn’t there stuff you want to do before you get stuck with me? We have the rest of our lives to be the antisocial old men that everyone knows in their apartment block for keeping cats and shouting over copies of the Guardian.”  
  
“I don’t,” Kili says. “I never wanted anything but to stay with you. And had you gone off to a normal country-“  
  
“Lebanon is normal.”  
  
“You know what I mean,” he snaps. “A country I could actually follow you to then fine, I wouldn’t mind for a single second but you’ve gone FCO, Fili, and unless we were fucking married there’s no way you could take me with you.”  
  
Fili is silent for a moment and Bilbo wonders if perhaps it’s down to his age. After all, Fili can still remember life before his brother came along. Kili has no such anaesthetic. “I can’t promise anything.”  
  
“I have to go,” Kili says and his voice cracks as Fili calls for him to wait but he snaps the lid of his laptop closed before he can get another word in. Bilbo leans in the doorway, watching as he weaves his fingers into the roots of his hair, hunched over his duvet.  
  
“You need a haircut,” Bilbo says.  
  
“He always liked it long.” Kili looks up at him with glass blown eyes. “I love him so much, you know, that one of these days I’m going to end up hating him.”  
  
—  
  
“Well,” Bilbo begins. “I think we should reevaluate our plans, today.” He stands before his father’s grave while rain falls like running water and he can hear Thorin’s soggy steps behind him, the splash of mud and poorly dodged puddles. He raises his umbrella enough for him to duck underneath, murmuring his thanks as he runs a hand through his hair, pushing it all back into place.  
  
“Could I tempt you with a coffee? There’s a lovely place just a few streets down from here. I would offer to bring you back to my flat but I’m afraid Kili has commandeered my sitting room.”  
  
Thorin glances at him from the corner of his eye. “You haven’t had any luck in getting him to return home?”  
  
“He and Fili have been fighting,” he says. “Now come along, I’m taking your silence as a yes to coffee. Follow me.”  
  
Thorin walks with his shoulders hunched below his umbrella, struggling to keep in line with Bilbo’s footsteps. “What are they fighting over?” He asks, finally.  
  
“The only thing those two would fight over,” he says, hopping up onto the sidewalk. “When Fili’s coming home. Here,” he says, handing the umbrella to Thorin. “You take this. That way you don’t have to bend over quite so often. Kili wants him to transfer to domestic after his contract is up in Beirut. Fili, understandably, does’t want to make any promises.” Bilbo leads him down a side street with broken cobblestone and empty bike racks and into a small, shabby cafe with linoleum floors and cracked drywall.  
  
Thorin, to his credit, doesn’t say a word. Instead he shrugs off his coat and lays it over the back of one of the many empty chairs, before offering to take Bilbo’s as well. “What would you like?”  
  
“I’ll pay-“ Thorin begins but Bilbo smiles and shakes his head.  
  
“I offered. I do believe that means it’s my treat. Now what is it you’d like to drink? Or shall I guess?”  
  
Thorin pauses, briefly, before saying, “I trust your judgment.”  
  
“Oh you shouldn’t,” he says, turning towards the young woman at the counter. He resists the urge to order something rich and chocolate based and instead goes for two cappuccinos, served in their colourful mismatched china, and takes the seat across from him. “Nothing fancy,” he tells him. “Mainly because this place sticks to the basics. But if we’d been at Starbucks I would’ve ordered you something terrible.”  
  
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he says. He still barely smiles, but Bilbo has learned to watch for the twitch in the corner of his mouth, the way he looks down at his hands, his lids lowered.  
  
“Perhaps you should come for dinner,” Bilbo says. “I force Kili to play kitchen assistant and I imagine you’d find it quite amusing.”  
  
Thorin frowns and looks away and Bilbo knows exactly what he’ll say next. “I’d rather not ruin his evening.”  
  
“You wouldn’t-“ he begins, but Thorin shakes his head.  
  
“I didn’t do a particularly good job of raising him, but at the very least I know my nephew.”  
  
“I’m sure you didn’t-“  
  
“Please,” he says. “It’s quite alright. You don’t need to reassure me. To be perfectly honest, I’d rather hear about your week, my nephew included or not.”  
  
Bilbo wonders if he knows. He wonders if he’s seen the way they look at each other, if he’s heard Kili say his brother’s name like it means something divine. He wonders if he thinks it’s his fault, or if he knows them better than that. “It’s been a slow week,” he says. “But you know me. I can chat about anything at all.”  
  
—  
  
Kili lays with his head resting on Bilbo’s thigh, his hair unwashed, wrapped in a knit blanket pulled up to his chin. “Would you mind telling me what your problem is with your uncle?”  
  
“Do you have twenty years to spare?” Kili mumbles into his pant leg. “Because that’s how long it will take.”  
  
“Footnotes,” Bilbo says, a familiar phrase to them both, usually murmured over paperwork in the office.  
  
“He pushed Fili all his life, made him become a little civil service clone. He takes pictures, you know. Beautiful pictures, he could be an artist. But now he lives in fucking Lebanon because Thorin wanted him to be a proper establishment man.” Kili sits up, running a hand through his hair. “Of course, that was when he was actually around, we saw him maybe three months out of the year when we were kids. The rest of the time he was paying someone else to give a damn about us. Whatever time he had was spent moulding Fili like his fucked up grandfather did to him.”  
  
Bilbo watches him as he scrubs his hands over his face, his cheeks flushed and his speech quick with pent up anger and finally he asks, “And what about your mother?”  
  
“She didn’t want kids, she never wanted kids. It was my father that convinced her, assuming he’d do all the work but then he went and got himself killed and you know, I don’t blame her one bit. We saw her every Christmas and during summer and Easter holidays, she was great fun, but she never pretended to be something she wasn’t.”  
  
Bilbo thinks of his own mother, her recipe books and her love of crosswords and her distant off key singing and thinks that might be the saddest thing he’s ever heard him say. “We love her, don’t get me wrong,” Kili says. “And she loves us. But she was never going to raise us, not as kids. It was Thorin who stepped up and he went and did a shit job of it.”  
  
“Did Thorin want kids?” Bilbo asks and Kili pauses, looking away like he’d never thought to ask.  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” he says. “It was his job. And all he did was repeat his grandfather’s mistakes.”  
  
Bilbo doesn’t argue, he doesn’t ask anymore questions. Instead he makes a pot of tea and while the kettle boils he thinks about Thorin, young and unprepared for the children left at his feet, and wonders what it was he wanted.  
  
—  
  
Thorin is late and Bilbo watches as a hazy dusk begins to fall over the hills of Saint Patrick’s, wondering if perhaps he won’t come at all. There is no sunset to admire, no orange skies, just grey transitioning to black and most days Bilbo prefers it that way. His phone buzzes against his hip and Bilbo digs his mobile out of his pocket to a ridiculous photo of Kili, cross-eyed and grinning, splayed across the screen.  
  
“You meeting Thorin today?” Kili asks without any introduction.  
  
“I should be, yes.”  
  
“Right, so we may have had a bit of a row over the phone.”  
  
Bilbo sighs. “Why am I not surprised? What were you even talking about?”  
  
“My fucking flat. It was just supposed to be a call about the damp in the one of the bedrooms, I thought it might spread to his favourite china cabinet if we didn’t seal the windows a little better before fall and it may have devolved into, you know, not that.”  
  
“Are you alright?” He asks pinching the bridge of his nose.  
  
“Yeah, I mean it’s nothing new. I just thought- if you’re seeing him tonight you ought to know. He’s moody on the best of days, so.”  
  
A train passes with fluorescent lights illuminating the distant faces of rush hour commuters. Bilbo watches the windows flicker by and murmurs, “Well at least you’ve warned me. Have you eaten yet?”  
  
“No, Dad.” Kili says with a laugh. “But I’ll eat.”  
  
“There’s baked ziti in the fridge. It just needs heating. Ah-”  he stops as he sees Thorin’s car pull into the gates. “He’s here. I’ll see you soon.” He hangs up and watches as Thorin trudges across the field, uncharacteristically empty handed.  
  
“The flower shop was closed,” he says.  
  
Bilbo looks up at him and pats the spot at his side. “I’m sure they’ll forgive you.” Thorin smiles in response, stretching out his legs across the dewy grass, but Bilbo sees the tension in his shoulders and he wonders if there isn’t a hint of heartbreak around the corners of his mouth. “Do you want to talk about it?”  
  
Thorin is silent for a long time. “I’m not very good at that,” he says, finally.  
  
“You don’t need to be. And it’s an offer, not a demand.” He brushes their shoulders together and Thorin sighs like his lungs are collapsing.  
  
“I imagine you’ve spoken to Kili.”  
  
“Briefly,” he admits. “He said you fought.”  
  
“It’s nothing new.” Thorin tilts his head back as if he’s looking for stars, though they both know he’ll see nothing out here but orange haze. He closes his eyes and parts his lips and Bilbo thinks he’s never looked so beautiful. “Can I tell you why I started to leave the flowers?” He asks.  
  
“You can tell me whatever you want.”  
  
“It’s because- our family, we are generations worth of terrible parents. Not a single one of us knew how to raise a child, except for maybe the boys’ father, though he didn’t get much of a chance. My grandfather was not anything close to perfect, my father barely knew me at all, and sometimes I think I’ve been even worse.”  
  
Bilbo frowns, but doesn’t interrupt. Instead, he squeezes Thorin’s hand in his and feels a pleasant jolt of surprise when he tightens his grip. He realises that he must know, he must have seen them together, the sparks between their fingertips and the shared pull of their heartstrings. He wants to tell him that it’s not his fault, it may not be anybody’s fault, but he holds his tongue.  
  
“I recognised your name the second my cousin mentioned it. Kili might think I’m oblivious to what he gets up to but I do keep rather close tabs on him and I watched as you so naturally managed what I was never able to do. When I visit my grandfather’s grave it feels half way between obligation and regret.” His eyes open, staring up at the spring sky.  
  
“But you seemed so at peace here and I thought you must have had wonderful parents, to have raised someone like you, who keeps coming back and has love left to spare.” He takes an uncharacteristically shaky breath. “I wanted to thank them and to thank you. Sometimes I stayed here longer than I should have, hoping that something would click and suddenly I would understand, that somehow I could make amends.”  
  
“Oh Thorin,” Bilbo says, unable to keep quiet any longer. “No one’s perfect, you know. You did the best you could and you loved them dearly and really that’s all anyone can ask for. Kili is young and he’s difficult. He often says things he doesn’t mean.”  
  
Thorin smiles at him. “You’re too kind, you know. Sometimes I fear my family has been more trouble to you than we’re worth.”  
  
“Nonsense,” Bilbo tells him, resting his head gently against Thorin’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t trade you lot for anything.”  
  
“And how lucky we are for it.” Another train passes by, clattering along the tracks, and they watch it go in silence, their fingers still entwined.  
  
—  
  
Bilbo wakes to someone crawling into bed beside him, whispering his name. It’s an hour before dawn, the windows are glazed in hazy blue light, and Kili is crying. “Bilbo,” he says again, his voice cracking. “There was an explosion, Fili’s phone goes straight to voice mail.” He sits up, his stomach turning with sudden, gripping nausea as Kili begins sobbing into his hands.     
  
“Come now,” he says, pulling him into his arms. His hair is a mess of knots and Bilbo tries to untangle them with unsteady fingers. “Whenever something like this happens, the cell towers are the first to go with everyone trying to contact their loved ones. It was the same in London, though you’ll be too young to remember. It’s hard to call down the street, you know, and I can’t imagine you’d have a chance of international calls going through. I’m sure that’s all. Was it near the embassy?”  
  
“No,” he whispers, his voice choked. “But what if he wasn’t at work? There was a bus-”  
  
“Why wouldn’t he be at work? You know better than that.” Bilbo reaches for his glasses, one arm still wrapped around Kili’s shoulders and feels around for his phone. News about Beirut is rarely a headline and it takes a moment before he can find any information at all. He catches sight of a generic photo of ambulances parked along dust covered streets and Bilbo sets it down.  
  
“Well come on,” he says. “Get your phone and your computer. Make sure Skype is on, he may call at any time.”  
  
He makes them tea as Kili lays on the couch, one of his mother’s knitted afghans wrapped around his shoulders as BBC News plays on the television. He watches with lifeless, red rimmed eyes and Bilbo wonders if he even hears a single thing. His tea goes untouched and eventually Bilbo drains it down the sink and makes another cup.  
  
When Kili’s phone does ring, it isn’t Fili on the other line. “Have you heard from him?” He asks, in a rush of words that leaves him nearly breathless. Bilbo hears the soft chatter of sound from the receiver before Kili his doubling over, clutching at his chest.  
  
Bilbo rushes forward, despite himself. “What’d they say, Kili? What’s going on?”  
  
He doesn’t answer, so Bilbo plucks the phone from his hand. “Hello?”  
  
“Bilbo.” Thorin sounds tired but calm. “The embassy has reported all staff accounted for. Fili is fine, but cellular will be down for a few hours yet.”  
  
He let’s out a shaky breath, pulling Kili closer. “I let him get to me,” he says. “I figured that was the case. Kili’s been on edge all morning and I suppose it rubbed off. Honestly what were the odds.”  
  
“It’s not the first time,” Thorin says. “Though I think it’s the first Kili knew about. Thank you for being there for him.”  
  
“Of course,” he says softly. “Are you in the office?”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“Kili and I have taken the day off. Why don’t you come by for lunch?” Thorin is silent and Bilbo sighs. “It’ll be good for you both. I simply won’t take no for an answer. I do believe you two owe me this much. I did wake before the sun this morning and have been making tea for hours since.”  
  
“We do owe you,” Thorin agrees. “I’ll see you at one.”       
  
Bilbo hangs up the phone and sets about wiping the tears from Kili’s eyes, his lecture settling on his tongue. “This cannot happen every time something horrible occurs in Beirut. Your uncle assures me it’s a relatively rare occurrence these days but I’m now initiating a no meltdown rule for anything that’s not happening within ten feet of either his flat or the embassy.”  
  
“You invited him for lunch,” Kili says, his voice hoarse. “Did you really just invite him for lunch?”  
  
“Yes. We’re going to make a lovely chili because I have mince that’s about to go off and you’re not going to complain about a single thing.”  
  
He laughs, a sudden, hysterical sound until finally he says, “You know very well that’s just impossible.”  
  
“I can dream though, can’t I?” Bilbo tells him. “Now take a nap. I’ll wake you soon. And when I do, I’m putting you to work.”  
  
—  
  
Thorin looks distinctly out of place, sitting with rigid shoulders against the soft carved wood of his kitchen table. His wrists rest delicately against the edge as he tears up a slice of ciabatta bread to splay in even little sections across his bowl. Kili, for his part, plays off the entire ordeal like a lunch meeting. He tells his stories, explains their work with words Bilbo has heard echoed to potential donors at events and in conference rooms. His voice sounds off, a note too high and entirely too guarded, but if Thorin notices anything at all he certainly never lets on. He asks polite questions which they take turns answering as Bilbo attempts to nudge Kili’s foot under the table.  
  
“Well I’m not surprised,” Thorin says, looking down at his bowl. “Not like the rest of the family, I imagine.” He looks up at Bilbo then, a ghost of a smile at his lips. “When he was six years-old a charity came to his school to collect old winter clothes for children in Bosnia and Serbia, right when the refugee crisis was starting. He called me that night and demanded that I buy coats for every child we could afford, even if it meant that he and Fili would go without Christmas presents that year.”  
  
Kili frowns. “I don’t really remember that,” he says.  
  
“Ask your brother, I’m certain he does. You were absolutely insistent. I thought you may forget within a week or so but you did no such thing.”  
  
“Did you really send coats then?” Bilbo asks.  
  
“Money,” he says.”Towards a number of children’s funds. I thought it might go a tad farther than winter clothes. I find that most charities know what it is people need, what they’re short on and what is in high demand.”  
  
“Baby formula,” Kili says, absentmindedly.    
  
When Thorin looks at him, Bilbo thinks his heart may break for them both. “I was ready to trust the experts. Which it seems you have become. I couldn’t be more delighted with your choice, Kili.”  
  
He murmurs his thanks and Bilbo breaks their silence with offers of tea. “I can’t imagine you take sugar,” he says to Thorin and Kili snorts as he clears away dishes.  
  
“You know him so well already. A splash of milk, leave the bag in. Thorin’s signature over brewed tea.” Before he can even set the bowls in the sink, Kili’s computer rings from the guest bedroom and his eyes go wide. “Fili’s home,” he says and Bilbo gestures in the direction of the hall.  
  
“Well go on. I’ll keep your uncle company. Though I don’t imagine you’ll be around to see him out.”  
  
“That’s quite alright,” Thorin says, “Tell Fili I said hello.” Kili nods his head all but runs to the bedroom.  
  
—  
  
“Do you like Thorin?” Kili asks. The weather has finally turned, breathing summer heat into London’s palms, so they spend their lunch break sitting at the edge of the water in Regent’s Park with takeout tucked between them.  
  
Bilbo picks around lo mien with a plastic fork. “I do,” he says. “Though I imagine you’re asking something else altogether.” Kili swings his feet, looking entirely innocent but Bilbo knows better than that. “And as I’m happily no longer a teenager, I can tell you with absolutely no embarrassment that I am both interested in and attracted to Thorin. And because I’m far older than you are I can also remind you that it’s none of your business.”  
  
“He is my uncle,” he points out.  
  
“Alas, still not your business.”  
  
Kili slurps loudly over his noodles and Bilbo resists the urge to scold him for it. “You know, if you two got together, you’d be my uncle too.”  
  
“Which would change very little, you know. And you are thinking rather far ahead.”  
  
“Though I’m not sure how I feel about this just yet,” he continues. “I wouldn’t be able to crash at your flat half as often if my uncle was there all the time.”  
  
“Very, very far ahead.”  
  
“Yeah, except he looks at you like I look at Fili. But I know Thorin, and he won’t do a single thing about it.” Kili turns to him with hard set eyes, an expression he so rarely sees. “He’ll keep leaving you flowers, he’ll meet you for coffee, he’ll do everything you want him to do but Thorin will never, ever, make the first move. He never has, he never will. I’m telling you this because I love you and I want you to be happy.” He sighs, nudging Bilbo’s side. “Thorin is a fucking moron when it comes to love of any kind. You’ll need all the help you can get.”  
  
“Well thank you for your concern,” Bilbo says, packing away the styrofoam containers. “And I love you too.”  
  
—  
  
“I’d like your help,” Thorin says, sipping at his tea. “Kili tells me you have an eye for antiques.”  
  
“Through no fault of my own,” Bilbo assures him. “My grandmother was a collector, like you I suppose. What do you need help with?”  
  
“I’ve bought a house,” he says. “Which means I finally have room for all the furniture I’ve forced the boys to share a flat with over the years. I’d like you to help me place them, which pieces go where. It was Kili’s idea, actually. I’ve always been fond of antiques but I’m rather useless with interior design.”  
  
Bilbo laughs. “Of course,” he says. “Though I should warn you, I hardly have experience. But between the two of us, we’ll work it out. Where’s your new house and why haven’t I gotten an invite yet?” He asks with a grin.  
  
“This is your invitation,” Thorin tells him. “But you won’t have to travel far. It’s in Leyton.”  
  
“Leyton,” he repeats, eyebrows raised. “You bought a house in Leyton even though you could definitely afford something gorgeous in Wimbledon?”  
  
“You were right,” Thorin says. “There’s something about this place. I’ve spent most of my life traveling and this is the first time I’ve ever been certain about staying put.”  
  
Bilbo laughs, shaking his head. “You lot,” he says. “Soon I’ll have you all living here. You know Kili’s threatening to rent down in Leytonstone. He’s not fifteen minutes away on the tube and still he calls it too much of a hassle.”  
  
Thorin watches him with a smile he can’t quite place. “It would be a shock to the system for him to actually have to pay rent.”  
  
Bilbo snorts into his tea. “Well he certainly could use it, couldn’t he, that brat. Though he did seem rather adamant.”  
  
“If Kili actually manages to move, I’ll cook for you every night for a week.”  
  
Bllbo laughs because suddenly, in a trick of light, Thorin’s mischievous little grin is a mirror image of his nephew’s. “I’ll hold you to that, you know.”  
  
“I’m certain you will.”  
  
—  
  
“I’m tired, Bilbo. Can’t we just go home?” Kili has been complaining since they stepped out of the station, turning towards the cemetery instead of Bilbo’s flat.  
  
“We’ll be quick,” Bilbo promises. They stop at the fruit vendor off of the high street where summer wild flowers sit in twined bundles alongside oranges and green apples. Kili murmurs in disbelief as he picks out two sets of poppies mixed with chamomile and sets them on the till. “Shut up,” he says. “It’s father’s day.”    
  
“Fili said father’s day was made by protestants in the States using loads of misogynistic rhetoric and a touch of capitalist fervour.” Kili says, hands in his pockets as he follows him out the door and down the street.  
  
“He’s probably right,” Bilbo says. “But my mother left them every year.” Like her gaudy poinsettias, she always bought summer grown wildflowers just in time for father’s day, leaving them at his grave like an inside joke that Bilbo was never quite privy to. He leads Kili through Saint Andrew’s and sets the flowers down with a tap to his father’s headstone.  
  
“Why’re there two?” Kili asks, watching him.  
  
Bilbo leads him to Thror’s grave, the only emerald stone against a sea of granite grey, and hands the flowers to Kili. “No way,” he says, pushing them back into Bilbo’s hands. “I’m having nothing to do with this.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because he was a fucking sociopath, that’s why. I’m not laying fucking flowers at his grave.” Kili stands with his arms folded until finally he seems to cave under the weight of Bilbo's silence and begins chewing on the sides of his nails.  
  
Bilbo sighs and sets the bouquet down on the flat edge of the stone, motioning for Kili to follow him towards the cemetery gates. “Do you want to elaborate?”  
  
“He was the world’s actual largest dick. He hated Fili for no reason, he was horrible to him, ever since he was a kid.”  
  
“Why?” Bilbo asks, frowning.  
  
“I already told you. He was crazy. We just tried to avoid him, which considering the whole boarding school set up wasn’t actually that hard to manage.”  
  
“And Thorin knew about this?”  
  
“Fuck knows,” Kili says. “Thorin was happy to turn a blind eye to most things. He probably thought Thror was all tough love or something. But he was just crazy, Bilbo. Don’t let him trick you into thinking he was a great guy.”  
  
He thinks of the golden child that Thorin always describes and the loving brother with silk heartstrings to Kili’s eyes, and he wonders what it was that Thror saw in him. “I make my own opinions, Kili,” he says. “Don’t you worry.”  
  
“Thorin’s not going to see them, you know. The flowers,” he says, gesturing behind them.  
  
“That’s not the point.” He assures him. “Now what’re your dinner requests? I’m tired of pasta bakes.”  
  
—  
  
The house is beautiful. It’s not a five minute walk from his front door, situated along a shady little street tucked back between branches of oak trees and wide reaching firs. They walk up the steps to the pale moss green door with its stained glass frames and already Bilbo thinks he may be just a little bit in love.  
  
Thorin pulls out a set of keys and unlocks the door, opening it to a high arched entranceway and shining hardwood floors. “How did you find it?” He asks, slipping off his shoes and turning into a sunlit dining room.  
  
“I got lost once,” he admits. “I passed it about three times before I finally noticed it was for sale. When I came back two months ago and saw it was still on offer, I bought it.” Bilbo watches him run his hand along the banister. “It felt right.”  
  
“I know exactly what you mean,” he says with a smile. “You’d love my grandparent’s house in Yorkshire.” He follows Thorin up the stairs, glancing around at the long, empty hall. “It’s old and beautiful and absolutely full of antiques.” Many of Bilbo’s fondest memories are stored in the walls of that house. He still dreams of it, sometimes, in the haze of the morning. He dreams of running through the carpeted halls, climbing crab apple trees, an out of tune piano with dusty ivory keys. “Maybe you’d like to visit it sometime,” he says.  
  
Thorin turns to look at him, his eyes wide and dark in the shadow of the hall. “Yes,” he says finally, hesitantly. “I would like that.”  
  
Bilbo smiles and thinks that Kili was right, Thorin is rather lost when it comes to love.  
  
—  
  
Kili doesn’t attend his graduation, despite Bilbo’s protests and Thorin’s silent disapproval. Instead, on the day of the ceremony, they climb to Primrose Hill and lay out on the grass to gaze at the sky. He can see a perfect span of blue just beyond the darkening stretch of clouds, like the edge of the world against the horizon line. “It’s going to rain,” he warns him as Kili stretches out on the grass and folds his arms behind his head.  
  
“I could use a little rain.”  
  
“I’m not too sure I could.”  
  
“You told me it was my day to make the plans,” Kili says. “And my plans consist of watching it pour from the top of London. Don’t worry, it’ll be quick.”  
  
It is quick, a proper summer downpour that soaks them both through and turns the park to muddy puddles, sends tourists running for shelter under ancient oak trees. They stay where they are, eyes closed, until the rain drifts into a lazy mist and the clouds break overhead. He turns to look at Kili, his hair plastered to his cheeks. He is pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes, biting his trembling lower lip.  
  
“Kili,” he murmurs, but he just shakes his head, mud splattered against his neck, and tries to steady his breathing. “I’m sure he-"  
  
“Don’t,” Kili rasps. He sits up, a mess of mud and wet clothing that hides his tear stained cheeks. He looks out over the city and whispers, “Maybe I love him more than he loves me.”  
  
“Or it’s just different,” Bilbo offers. Perhaps Fili’s love is one that can survive along telephone wires while Kili stays preserved, desiccated. His chest aches for the way Kili shakes his head, like he doesn’t trust his voice to speak.  
  
“I’ll be fine,” he says, eventually, like it’s self reassurance. “I’ll be fine.”  
  
—  
  
They start in the living room with Kili sprawled half naked across the chaise, watching as Thorin nudges takeout containers out of the way to inspect his furniture in the dusty half light. “You’re not taking the couch,” Kili says, yawning. “It is permanently me-shaped, and I shan’t have you ruining my movie nights.”  
  
“Any other requests?” Thorin asks as Bilbo bends down to inspect a drinks cabinet. He expects rings on the finish left by Kili’s hastily poured tequila or water marks like fingerprints but instead it is clean and smooth, surprisingly intact.  
  
“Take the rest.” Kili says with a wave of his hand. “But the couch is mine.”  
  
“You know,” Bilbo begins, tracing the edge of a French side table. “I’m a little shocked you’ve kept all this in such good condition.”  
  
“Ikea,” Kili says with a grin. “Thorin replaced everything we actually used with flimsy cardboard to limit my interactions with anything particularly pricey.”  
  
“Did you really?” He asks. Thorin smiles at him, eyes lowered and Kili hangs over the back of the chaise, making gagging noises at them both.  
  
“I’m going to leave you two to do all the work yourselves if you keep making doe eyes at each other.”  
  
Bilbo snorts. “Don’t act like you’ll be any help at all. Besides, you’re the one who wanted to be here.”  
  
“See?” Kili says, waving an arm dramatically. “I knew this would happen. You two ganging up on me. I’m perpetually outnumbered now.”  
  
“I haven’t said a word,” Thorin murmurs, sticking an orange tag to a glass enclosed bookshelf in the corner so the movers know to pick it up.  
  
“You’re silently agreeing with him,” Kili says, flopping back against the cushions. “Now hurry up. I can’t have you here all day. I am a young person with a life you know. I need my privacy and that.”  
  
“You practically live with Bilbo,” Thorin says and Kili tosses a cushion at him, shouting his victory when it hits his shoulder.  
  
“You’re a bad influence on each other.”  
  
“Oh that reminds me,” Bilbo begins, sticking a tag to low sitting bedside table. “Thorin’s staying the night at mine so we can get up early and meet the movers in the morning.”  
  
“This is outrageous,” he mumbles into his cushion. Bilbo pats his head as he passes.  
  
“You’ll get over it.”  
  
—  
  
“I need paper,” Kili says, tying his hair back with a thick rubber band. “Like real paper, nice paper.”  
  
Bilbo glances up at him, pushing down his reading glasses to watch him fiddle with a leaky ink pen. “Why?”  
  
“I’m going to write him a letter. A proper letter.”  
  
“You have terrible hand writing.”  
  
“Fili can read it,” he assures him. “He’ll figure it out. Come on, Bilbo. I know you’re old fashioned enough to have card stock or something fancy lying around.”  
  
“What’s going to be in this letter?” He takes off his glasses and pinches the bridge of his nose with the tips of his fingers.  
  
“I’m going to explain how I feel about all of this.”  
  
Bilbo looks at him and imagines he has it all written out in his head, every word carved into his tongue after so many sleepless, bitter nights. “Surely you’ve talked about this before.”  
  
“I’m no good at conversations with him. He makes me feel like a moron- he doesn’t mean to,” Kili adds, quickly. “He doesn’t do it on purpose. It’s like I go to him knowing what I want to say and seconds later everything’s just turned to mush and whatever he wants always sounds so reasonable and-”  
  
“The letter desk in my bedroom.”  
  
Kili frowns. “What?”  
  
“There’s paper in the letter desk.”  
  
—  
  
_You told me I wasn’t romantic, which, by the way, I still dispute. If surprising you with coffee and hobnobs after your mock exams isn’t romance, I don’t know what is. But this will serve as evidence, settling the matter once and for all. I, like many hopeless stereotypes to come before me, have written you a love letter._  
  
_You never asked why I took to classics but I always thought you’d probably guessed it. Our grandmother bookmarked Homer’s Hymn to the Dioscuri in that little red leather bound that I loved so much. I found out later that she was a gemini, reliant on her daily horoscope but at the time I thought it was like a sign. The Greeks always said it better, you know, the things I couldn’t. And when you bought me those books each year I read them and imagined your voice because it all made so much more sense coming from you._  
  
_So I lied, this isn’t exactly a love letter. I can’t ever hold my own in an argument with you. I inevitably either crack under the pressure or get bored about four minutes in and start taking my clothes off. This time though, I get the first and last word and you have to sit on your tiny little balcony and read what I have to say._  
  
_You’ve given me a lot of reasons for why you decided to take the job, but I have my own theory. I think you realised somewhere around your second year in uni that you want two things that are incompatible. You want what Thorin raised you to want, the airport terminals and the foreign currency and the black tie embassy do’s. You also, inexplicably, want me. But a shining career in civil service does not tie in well to accusations of incest. So you thought that through and you came to the conclusion that while a job offer wouldn’t wait, I would._  
  
_And you’re right, just like you always have been. I will wait. I’ll keep working and occasionally I’ll get wasted and lure someone home from Brixton. I’ll read the Iliad when I can’t sleep and I’ll likely spend more time than is reasonably appropriate in Bilbo’s kitchen. I’ll answer your calls and listen to your stories and I’ll tell some of my own. I’ll do all of it, I’ll stay out of mind until you need me, pretend that I can function as a reasonably independent person._  
  
_I’ll do it because I love you and I want you to be happy but I cannot promise everything will be the same when you do come back. I’m in love with you but I can imagine hating you as well, resenting you, I can imagine tearing us both to pieces. I’ll do my best, I really will, to play my role in your scripted life but promise you won’t blame me if I can’t keep it up. If you can promise me that much, I won’t ask for anything else._  
  
_It’s a question that requires an answer, you know, but I’ll actually fly to Beirut myself if you send me a fucking letter in response. It’s not cute and ironic coming from you. We have computers for a reason. Just promise me you won’t come back to me in five years and tell me it’s all my fault. Preemptive forgiveness, the Greeks loved that._  
  
—  
  
Kili sends his letter from a postbox off of Camden High Street and spends the evening curled at Bilbo’s side with classics night playing on the television. “Do you think he’ll be angry with me for all the things I said?” Bilbo glances down at him and Kili smiles back. “I know you read it.”  
  
“I only read some,” he admits. “The first page, then I stopped.” He knew it was left for him, open on the table with dry ink and crisp pages but Bilbo couldn’t bring himself to finish it. “It’ll be fine, but you have to do more than wait, okay? Promise me you’ll try. You’re so young, there has to be more to your life than just that.”  
  
“I have you,” Kili says.  
  
Of course that’s not what he meant and Kili knows it, but Bilbo let’s him be, let’s him sigh over Clark Gable in uniform, and stretch out his legs, and set his cup down without a coaster. “You’ll be fine,” Bilbo tells him.  
  
“Does this film feel vaguely racist to you?”  
  
He runs his fingers through his hair. “It’s Victor Fleming, Kili, there’s nothing vague about it.”    
  
—  
  
Half the rooms are empty still, hardwood floors stretched long, edging against exposed brick walls and crown moulding. But the kitchen is fully stocked, with a beautiful dinner table of carved maple and granite counters with a white backsplash and even if it weren’t for the man who stands over the stovetop, Bilbo would have fallen for every brass knob and window pane.  
  
Thorin never talks about his day, never alludes to glass sky scrapers and the suits that reside in them. Instead he tells him about Cornwall, the cloudy grey beaches that will always sit so much higher in his heart than the sunlight in the South of France.  
  
“My mother loved Cornwall,” Bilbo says, sipping his tea and inching around Thorin’s shoulder to get a glimpse at the pan.  
  
Thorin absentmindedly pulls him closer, fingers lingering at the the seams of his shirt, and asks, “Is that where she’s buried?”  
  
“Cremated,” Bilbo says. “But yes. It had to be Cornwall. Sometimes I think she hated Leyton, always had a heart for the sea and the Thames would never be good enough.”  
  
“That much I can understand,” Thorin says. “Though I could never hate Leyton.”  
  
—  
  
When Bilbo was seventeen, he spent the summer in North Yorkshire at his aunt’s cozy suburban home. Ripon was sleepy and quiet and it rained for days on end. There were no rattling trains and the air felt clean and the clouds didn’t hang quite so low. Bilbo spent his afternoons laying with Drogo under shaded trees, inhaling humidity and exhaling cigarette smoke. Drogo had a girlfriend who loved chewing gum and pulled her dark hair back into braids and he spouted his wisdom with nicotine stained fingers.  
  
“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s just like having a best friend, but also you really want to have sex with them. But instead of becoming friends over a few months it’s sudden, it’s real sudden.”  
  
“There has to be more to it than that,” he’d said. But Bilbo had never been in love before and after a while he began to wonder if he’d been wrong all along. He’s had first dates and shared flats and arguments over the telephone but nothing felt the way he imagined it was meant to.  
  
It took fifteen years before he finally glimpsed the silver line that separates love and affection. It wasn’t sudden though, not like Drogo’s whirlwind romance at seventeen. Instead it grew with each flower pedal pressed between book pages, with every half smile and exasperated look.  
  
“I still can’t believe he bought a fucking house here,” Kili says. He flings himself across the sofa, watching as Bilbo fills out his crossword. “Eight down is-”  
  
“I will kick you out if you give me a single answer.” Bilbo says, nudging him away until he finally seeks refuge on the opposite end of the couch. “It is a lovely house, by the way, you should visit. And don’t be a hypocrite, I know exactly what flats you’ve been eyeing.”  
  
“Well at least I’m up front about it,” Kili says, shoving his feet into Bilbo’s lap. “Whereas Thorin is claiming to love sleepy little Leyton when really he’s just head over heels and is hoping that if he forces himself into your life often enough you’ll feel just the same.”  
  
“Who’s to say I don’t?” Bilbo asks, scribbling at the corner of his page in blue ink pen. Kili stops his squirming.  
  
“You don’t though, do you?” He asks. He sounds hurt, disbelieving, and Bilbo rests his hand against his ankle.  
  
“Yeah,” he says. “I think I might.” Eleven down is _nigh_ , but he doesn’t write it.  
  
“You’re joking.” Kili is watching him with wide eyes and parted lips and Bilbo holds his gaze. “Jesus, you’re not. Love is so fucking easy for you, isn’t it?” It hasn’t been easy, it’s taken a lifetime, but Bilbo knows this isn’t about him anymore. “You just met a fucking stranger in a graveyard and that was it? Soulmates?”  
  
“You’re being dramatic,” Bilbo tells him. “And besides, I didn’t just meet him and hit it off. I met you first.”  
  
Kili sighs into his hands. “Why can’t you just let me be angry with you?”     
  
“Because there’s nothing for you to be angry about, you brat.”  
  
“He’s stealing you away from me.” Kili mumbles.  
  
“You’re an idiot.”  
  
“And he’s old, Bilbo. And he doesn’t like music. No one doesn’t like music. He’s a total freak.”  
  
“He’s wonderful,” Bilbo assures him, patting his leg. He stands, leaving his unfinished crossword on the coffee table and shuffles into the kitchen.  
  
“I don’t approve.” Kili shouts after him.  
  
“Oh my darling, I don’t need you to.”  
  
—  
  
Thorin chops bell peppers into consistent little cubes that puts Kili’s usual attempts to shame. He works with straight shoulders, standing with a piano player’s ridge to his spine even when they’re alone in the kitchen with the radio playing static ridden fifties pop from above the stove. “Kili came to my office today,” he says, wiping his hands on the dish towel at Bilbo’s side and leaning back against the countertop.  
  
He stops stirring. “What did he do this time?”  
  
Thorin smiles, his blue eyes bright. “I think he gave me the talk.”  
  
“What talk?”  
  
“About my intentions towards you.”  
  
Bilbo nearly drops the wooden spoon into his half formed pasta sauce and turns to stare at him. “Oh, you’re joking.”  
  
“Not at all. He was very insistent. I’ve rarely seen him so determined, you know.”  
  
“I’m going to kill your nephew,” Bilbo tells him, reaching for his hand. “And you’ll have to help me hide the body. I always knew it would come to this.” Thorin kisses each knuckle in turn and it makes his stomach roll, two parts unpleasant with just a dash of anticipation.  
  
“He threatened me with something very similar, should I do anything to hurt you.”  
  
“Kili watches far too much television.” He leans against the counter and gives the bottom of the pan a halfhearted stir. “What did you say?” He asks finally, unable to help himself.  
  
“I told him I intend stay with you for as long as you’ll allow it.” Thorin’s fingertips brush the curve of his shoulder blade and Bilbo’s breath catches. “And he told me things I already knew. That you are kind and generous and how neither of us deserve you.”  
  
“Thorin-” he snaps, turning to face him, but Thorin is already reaching forward, bending down to press their lips together in a chaste, dry kiss. “Oh,” Bilbo murmurs, as he pulls back. “Oh good, does that mean I can kiss you now?” Thorin tilts his head to the side, looking slightly bemused. “It’s just that you’re very old fashioned and we hadn’t exactly talked about this,” he gestures between them. “And I didn’t want to push and make you feel uncomfortable so-”  
  
“Yes,” Thorin says, cutting him off with a hand to his cheek. “To answer your question, you can most definitely kiss me.”  
  
—  
  
Bilbo visits Thorin’s office building in Bank with lunch packed for two and a thermos of tea, aided by Kili’s devious text messages to Thorin’s assistant and the promise of a clear schedule. “He thinks it’s a lunch meeting,” Ori tells him, grinning through splayed fingers and leading him down the glass encased hallways to Thorin’s office.  
  
Ori scampers back towards his desk as Bilbo knocks twice and opens the door. “Oh,” Thorin begins, looking up at him. He smiles and stands to greet him but pauses with his hands still on his desk as he says, “Is there something wrong with-“  
  
“No,” Bilbo assures him, pressing a kiss to his parted lips. “Kili’s fine. I’m here for you.”  
  
“You’ve been conspiring with Ori, haven’t you?” Thorin’s thumb brushes the line of his jaw and Bilbo is momentarily distracted by the cut of his suit and the smell of his aftershave.  
  
“This was supposed to be a perfectly innocent picnic,” he groans, pressing his cheek to Thorin’s chest as he laughs into his hair. “And look what you’ve done.”  
  
“I imagine I can make it up to you later.”  
  
“You’d better,” Bilbo says, with one last lingering kiss. “Now come on. The weather’s shit but at least it’s not raining yet.” He leads him down Cheapside, following the domes of the cathedral in the distance.  
  
“Where are we going?” He asks.  
  
“The churchyard at St. Paul’s. Then we can lie on the grass and pretend we can see the sun.”  
  
“Can you do that?”  
  
“I haven’t been told otherwise,” Bilbo assures him. “And I’ve spent a significant amount of time admiring their lawn.”  
  
There are a smattering of people in black and navy suits pressed against each other on park benches, eating from tupperware containers balanced on their knees. Bilbo leads Thorin towards the back entrance where an ancient willow tree grows with trimmed branches, creaking in the wind. “Come on,” he says, sitting down and digging through his bag for their lunch. “This is the perfect spot.”  
  
Bilbo thinks he hasn’t seen anything nearly as beautiful as Thorin laying back against the grass, his suit jacket thrown over Bilbo’s bag and arms folded behind his head. “I think I’ll have to kick Kili out tonight,” he tells him.  
  
“Then do it over text. Otherwise he’ll guilt you into letting him stay.” He loves afternoons like these, when Thorin tells him stories of the boys when they were children, memories that he lets go one by one, up into the treetops. “When they were little, Kili learned to fake cry. He would burst into tears at the drop of a hat when it suited him, but when he fell from a tree and broke his arm he didn’t shed a tear. I never once saw him cry after the age of about twelve, not in earnest anyway. Fili though would never fail to tear up over Lion King.”  
  
Bilbo lays beside him, their fingers entwined, but despite Thorin’s beautiful smile in the shadow of the cathedral, for a moment all he can think of is how many times he’s seen Kili brought to tears. It passes quickly, as Thorin rolls to his side and tells him that he once got himself locked in the cellar of his cousin’s home in an attempt to beat Fili at hide and seek.  
  
“You must have a special talent for that game,” he says, grinning.  
  
“Don’t breathe a word of that to the boys. I’ve kept it under wraps for the better part of fifteen years. I have to keep some form of dignity in tact.”    
  
—  
  
Kili stops answering the door when he knocks, instead he’ll shout “Use your damn key,” from a second story window as Bilbo rolls his eyes and digs through his pockets. He pushes the door open, nearly slipping on a pile of mail left spread under the entryway. He sighs and collects them into a stack, flipping through the envelopes as he heads towards the kitchen.  
  
“Do you ever even look at these?” He calls up the stairs as he passes. There are a decent amount of bank statements and itemised phone bills left alongside takeout menus and colourful adverts.  
  
Kili materialises in the kitchen doorway, still in sweatpants at half past four in the afternoon. “It’s all junk anyway.”  
  
“So you’re just going to let it pile up at the door?”  
  
“I told Thorin he should hire a cleaner.”  
  
“He is not hiring a cleaner for a flat you’re never in.” He stares down at an envelope stamped with olive trees, Kili’s name written in neat script with no return address. “Here,” he says, handing it back over his shoulder. “This one is actually for you.” Kili takes it, sitting at the kitchen table and tearing at the edge as Bilbo finishes sorting the rest of his mail, tipping all but the bills into the trash.  
  
He turns when Kili fails to respond after the third attempt at saying his name, and watches as he clutches heavy woven paper, naturally pale, almost yellow in the late afternoon light. He reads quickly, swapping out pages until finally he smiles, holding up the last sheet for Bilbo to see. It looks like music notes, written along shaky bars, and Bilbo recognises it as a piano piece.  
  
“He responded with a letter after all?” He asks with a smile.  
  
“No,” Kili whispers, setting the sheet music aside. “We already talked, the day he received it.” He laughs then and Bilbo smiles along with him. “That bastard wrote me a love letter. A proper one. He added the music at the end, said to leave it at the piano and he’d play it for me when he’s home.” Bilbo collects Fili’s impromptu music sheets and sets them in a row along the piano stand.  
  
Kili watches him, biting at his lip. “I spent my entire life coming home to the sound of music.” He hears now what has always gone unsaid, the unknown tremor in Kili’s restless hands, the television left blaring with the volume far too high, the constant stream of movement and sound that comprise his daily routine. He starts reading again, shifting through each page, slower this time and Bilbo looks away, unwilling to catch sight of the words written just for him, unfathomable and complete.  
  
—  
  
They have a dinner reservation to keep at a French restaurant in Soho. Thorin spent most of their walk to Saint Patrick’s assuring him multiple times that no dish even closely resembling snails would be found on the menu but Bilbo remains skeptical. They keep their visit short and Bilbo takes a photo of Thorin’s shoulders as he walks behind him along the path.  
  
“Wait,” Bilbo says, reaching into his bag for the bouquet of late summer wildflowers tied with twine. “I almost forgot.” He leads Thorin to the emerald granite marker with Thror’s name written in black letters, and lays the flowers at his feet.  
  
“There’s no right way to raise a child,” he tells the stone. “There’s no easy way, either. But you should know that your grandson is a wonderful person. I’m not sure how much can be attributed to you, but I imagine you don’t particularly care, because parents tend not to. But I wanted to thank you regardless.” He taps the gravestone with his fingertips and Thorin watches with glassy, red rimmed eyes.  
  
“Thank you,” Thorin whispers.  
  
“Hush,” Bilbo says. “Now come on. We can’t be late for your fancy dinner.”  
  
“It’s not fancy,” Thorin repeats, his voice soft as he follows Bilbo towards the gates. “It’s really quite low key.”  
  
“I will never trust a Durin on what does or does not constitute low key. Come on, keep up. You’d think with those long legs of yours you wouldn’t always be a mile behind me.”    
  
—  
  
“If you two are going to be slow as fuck about this I’m not coming with you anymore.” He skips along the sidewalk, dodging puddles with infuriating consistency.  
  
“We never asked,” Bilbo says, watching him. “In fact, I’m fairly certain Thorin would prefer it if you weren’t laying on the sofa shouting abuse at him the whole time.” Kili decides to ignore him in favour of hopping over the small pool of water that seems to perpetually swamp the edges of Bethnal Green station. “Besides,” he continues. “We’re nearly finished. I think we have two rooms to go, the rest will go into storage.”  
  
“It’s going to be weird, not having so much furniture around.”  
  
“You can buy your own,” Bilbo suggests.  
  
Kili snorts, shaking his head. “I’m happy with a sofa and a television.”  
  
“And my flat,” he says, digging in his back pocket for his Oyster card.  
  
“And your flat. Which reminds me, Thorin doesn’t actually have keys to my place so,” he gestures awkwardly in front of him. “You’ll have to let him in if you two go this weekend.”  
  
“How does Thorin not have keys to the flat he owns?”  
  
Kili shrugs. “He never asked,” he says. “And don’t go giving him your set. I prefer it this way.”  
  
Bilbo knows when to choose his battles so he agrees, reluctantly, with an added, “We’ll be revisiting this topic later.”  
  
“Yeah,” Kili mumbles, following him through the gates. “I don’t doubt it.”  
  
—  
  
He finishes marking the last piece of furniture with a little orange tag and glances around the room. “Thorin,” he calls down the stairs. “How high is the slant in the ceiling? I’m not sure about this wardrobe.” He doesn’t answer, so Bilbo huffs and holds up his fingers to estimate the length of the trim before returning to the kitchen.  
  
“Thorin,” he calls again, peaking around the doorway. “Did you hear me?”  
  
Thorin is sitting at the table, pages of heavy, yellowing paper spread out around him. He sees the distant scratch of handwriting, lines in black ink pen. Thorin looks up at him with wide eyes, his head tilted. “Did you know about this?”  
  
He sees it then, the silver lining, he sees how fragile the threads are. “Yes.”  
  
“Get out,” he says, his voice level, but he swallows hard and the pages crumple in his hand.  
  
Bilbo turns but hesitates in the doorway. He reaches into his pocket and tosses Kili’s key ring into the kitchen, watching as it hits the floor and skids to Thorin’s feet. “He said you didn’t have a set. Remember to lock up.” He knows Thorin will not come after him. He won’t run to the station, he won’t show up at his flat, so he walks quickly and doesn’t look back because he cannot bare the sight of the empty sidewalk.  
  
The train ride to Leyton is hazy and far too warm and when he finally arrives, he turns towards the cemetery without so much as a thought. It seems natural, arriving at the gates to the sound of his own heartbeat, deafening in his ears. He never speaks to his father’s grave. He did once, as a child, only to see his mother turn away with a whisper of, “Oh Bilbo. He can’t hear you anymore.” So he doesn’t walk the familiar path to his father’s headstone, instead he returns to Thror’s simple epitaph and sinks to his knees.  
  
“I don’t think I can fix this,” he tells the stone. He knows what his mother would say, her advice builtin like a phonograph recording, scratchy and static but clear enough to hear. She would tell him that he cannot take responsibility for another person’s heart, and it would be too late because he’s already taken three.  
  
His phone vibrates in his pocket just as a train passes by and Bilbo stares down at Kili’s photograph. He’d changed it the day before from his usual exaggerated selfies to one Bilbo took of him sitting cross-legged on the couch, reading a book about Pompeii as he twirls a stray curl of hair around and around his finger. He looks beautiful and deceptively content and Bilbo smiles when he answers the phone.  
  
“If you two are having sex in my flat I’ll refuse to speak to you ever again.”  
  
“You wouldn’t last an hour,” Bilbo says. “Who would feed you?”  
  
“Nando’s would. And that would drive you absolutely crazy, wouldn’t it?”  
  
Bilbo looks out over the graveyard and for a moment he finds himself unable to respond. His throat closes in around itself and he presses a hand to his mouth, attempting to settle his breathing.  
  
“Seriously though,” Kili continues. “Where are you? Are you getting dinner with Thorin or what, because I’m going to order out and I’m certainly not staying up for you.”  
  
“I’m coming home,” he manages, his voice low to keep from breaking.  
  
Kili pauses, an unusual breath of silence. “Bilbo? Is everything alright?”  
  
He exhales slowly, looking up at the light pollution reflected off the clouds. “I’ll be there soon.”  
  
“Alright,” Kili says. “See you.”  
  
He hangs up and stretches his legs out thinking that he’ll give Kili this small grace, the time it takes him to walk home, before he has to tell him everything. “You must’ve known him well,” Bilbo whispers to the stone. “Do you think he’d ever forgive this?” It doesn’t answer and tears prick at the corners of his eyes before he finally pulls himself up and turns towards the gates.  
  
He walks home slowly, keeping his breath even, thinking of very little except for the cracks in the sidewalk and the electric hum of the street lamps. When he finally reaches his front door he hesitates, his keys clenched in his hands. His mother’s voice spins and crackles, telling him not to delay the inevitable. He opens the door to Kili sitting in the living room, a cushion clutched to his chest.  
  
“What’s wrong?” He asks, his eyes wide, chewing at his lower lip. Bilbo takes a seat beside him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders, and wishes for just a moment that Kili didn’t catch every shift in tone, every expression and nervous tic. “Has Thorin done something stupid?”  
  
Bilbo rubs his thumb up and down his shoulder before finally he says, “He found your letter. You left it on the kitchen table.”  
  
Kili sits up, pulling away to look at him. “Oh no,” he whispers. “No, no. I need to- he’s not upset with you is he?” He smiles sadly and Kili shakes his head. “He’s can’t be, Bilbo, he’s just in shock, you haven’t done anything wrong. Okay, okay.” He puts a hand to his chest. “Remember how I said I wouldn’t care if he found out? Turns out I do care a bit. I feel slightly ill.”  
  
“Maybe you should go call Fili,” he suggests.  
  
Kili looks up at him with glassy eyes. “Have I ruined this for you?” He whispers.  
  
“No,” he says, tucking Kili’s unruly hair back behind his ears. “None of this is your fault. Go on, call-” Kili cuts him off, throwing his arms around Bilbo’s shoulders and holding him tightly.  
  
“I’ll fix it,” he says. “I promise I’ll fix it.” Bilbo hugs him back but can’t bring himself to believe him.  
  
—  
  
“That fucking bastard has no right to be-”  
  
“Kili,” Fili says, his voice distant. “Calm down.”  
  
Bilbo sips at his tea, gazing at the coffee table where Kili’s laptop sits displaying a grainy picture of Fili’s flat. He can make out pink tinted walls and stacks of dishes in a wooden drying rack. Fili swims back into focus, a smart phone in hand. He looks exhausted with his hair still mussed from sleep and every few minutes he rubs at his eyes with the backs of his hands.    
  
“We’ll just call and explain that Bilbo-”  
  
“One battle at a time, love. First, we have to get him to even answer his mobile.” For the first time, Bilbo realises that Fili lacks the pitch of Leicester that his brother and uncle both share and he spares a moment to wonder why. “I’ve called him nearly a dozen times and he’s finally just turned it off altogether.”  
  
“I’ll kill him.”  
  
Fili smiles then, a slight quirk of his lips. Then he looks up, gazing at his monitor. “Bilbo, I am sorry. We were never very careful, partly because to be honest I assumed he knew.”  
  
“Really?” He asks, just as Kili snaps, “you never told me that.”  
  
“Well we weren’t particularly subtle, Kee,” he says. “I thought he must’ve known, or at least considered it. But clearly I gave him slightly more credit than he is due.”  
  
“To be fair, it’s not often an obvious conclusion to draw,” Bilbo says. But then he thinks of his own suspicions, he thinks of their shared bedroom, the one Kili has never let him enter, left like a shrine of photographs and old clothes with shoes lined along the door. He thinks of the room Kili sleeps in, filled with nothing but books. He thinks of their lingering touches and Kili’s broken heart and he begins to wonder if perhaps it should’ve been.  
  
“You’re right,” Fili says. “I just hope he has the sense not to confide in anyone else.”  
  
Kili suddenly looks quite ill. “You think he would?”  
  
“I don’t know, Kee.”     
  
Bilbo can see the panic begin to set in so he reaches for Kili’s shoulder and says, “He won’t. Not yet, anyway. And we’ll get to him before then.”  
  
“How?” He gasps. “He’s not answering his phone.”  
  
“He lives five minutes from Bilbo’s flat, Kee. I’m in Beirut, but you’re still in Leyton.”  
  
“I can’t just- I’m not going to-”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Bilbo says. “I’ll go see him tomorrow morning. You can stay here.”  
  
“Bilbo,” Fili begins, frowning.  
  
“It’s quite alright, Fili. I have my own business to settle with him.” Kili mumbles a miserable apology through the gaps in his fingers until Bilbo sighs and gives him a light shove. “Stop apologising. You haven’t done anything wrong.”  
  
“Neither have you,” Fili says.  
  
“Neither has Thorin.” Kili looks and away and Fili bites at the edges of his fingernails, a nervous habit that they seem to share. “Sleep, Fili. I know we woke you. I’ll speak to Thorin tomorrow and we’ll call you straight after.”  
  
He reluctantly agrees, eyeing the screen like he wants to say something else, words he imagines would be for his brother only. “Good night,” he says instead. “I’ll speak to you both tomorrow.”  
  
—  
  
He knocks on the door with his mother’s courage clasped in his fist. It’s the way Bilbo has been dealing with fear for the better part of thirty years, he pretends, for a few seconds at a time, that he inherited his mother’s iron heart. When Thorin answers the door he opens it wide enough to see through and Bilbo stakes a step back, seeing the gesture for what it is.  
  
“Fili left me a voice message,” he says. His eyes look dull in the London overhang.  
  
“I imagine he left many.”  
  
“About you,” he says after a moment. “He explained what happened.”  
  
“Would you like to let me in, Thorin?” For a moment he looks ready to refuse but eventually he steps back and allows Bilbo through the door. He doesn’t take off his coat or toss his shoes into the entryway or settle into the kitchen to make tea. Suddenly this house feels foreign and Bilbo stands with his hands in his pockets until Thorin finally looks away. “You can yell at me if you’d like.”  
  
“Fili said you tried to keep them apart,” he says in a tumble of words that he appears to have kept behind clenched teeth. “That’s why Kili stays with you so much. And he made you promise not to tell.”  
  
Bilbo smiles. He knows from Thorin’s stories that Kili was the difficult child, the one he had to pull from tree branches and send to bed early. But he imagines Fili must have gotten away with far more than Thorin was ever privy to. “Unfortunately for you, Fili is a wonderful liar.” Thorin’s hands clench into fists and his shoulders straighten like a piano player poised. “Come on,” Bilbo says, taking a few cautious steps into the living room. “Let me explain.”  
  
Thorin sits, a reasonable amount of distance set between them, and looks straight ahead. Bilbo watches him for just a moment, long enough to take in the cut of his cheekbones, the shadow of his lashes, before he begins to speak.  
  
“The first time I met Kili, he was crying.” He looks up, frowning, and Bilbo continues. “It was in the graveyard. I thought he may have been there to visit someone, and I know a thing or two about grief. So I tried to talk to him and he never told me why he was crying or why he was there but I was able to guess. I knew since the day I met him that he was nursing a broken heart, as young people are wont to do. So I suppose, maybe that’s why I wasn’t that surprised when I did find out about Fili. The pieces were always there, I just hadn’t put them together yet.”  
  
“Do you know how long?” He asks. “How long it’s been?”  
  
“I asked the same thing and Kili says they’ve loved each other for as long as either of them can remember.”  
  
“And you’re okay with that?”  
  
Bilbo shrugs. “Sometimes,” he says. “And sometimes I think Kili might love a little too much. He doesn’t leave room for anything else.” Sometimes he wishes he knew Fili through more than just stories, that the easy tone of his voice didn’t set him on edge.  
  
“He was always that way.” Thorin is staring at the ground, his elbows resting on his knees. “He would play football until he collapsed from exhaustion, he would swim until his lips turned blue. When he decided on something, he would never budge.”  
  
“Like the coats,” Bilbo says.  
  
“Yeah,” he whispers. “Like the coats. It’s Fili I’m disappointed with.”  
  
“From the sounds of it, it was usually Fili you were disappointed with.”  
  
Thorin looks up, staring at him. “Talk to them,” he says, reaching for his forearm. “Just call them, let them explain. I cannot speak for either but please, just give them this chance.” He doesn’t respond so Bilbo lets go, allows him to look away, to watch the whitewashed walls, and he heads for the door.  
  
Kili is waiting for him around the corner, leaning back against a street sign, glancing down at this phone. “He might be willing to speak to Fili,” Bilbo says. “But it’s no guarantee.”  
  
“What about you?” he asks, hooking their arms together, leaning down to rest his temple against the top of Bilbo’s head.    
  
“Nothing lasts forever.” He tries not to think that it’s barely been a season, a handful of months with Thorin at his side.  
  
“I don’t believe that,” Kili says and Bilbo smiles, tugging him down the street. Kili believes in the Greek fates, in threads that align from birth, in the beautiful shine of his brother’s eyes.  
  
“I know. And that’s what I love about you.”  
  
—  
  
Bilbo’s phone buzzes, the number marked as unlisted against the black screen of his mobile. He considers letting it ring, tapping his fingers against his desk until the incessant noise gets the better of him. “Hello?”  
  
“Hello, Bilbo. It’s Fili.”  
  
“Oh,” he begins. “Is everything alright?” He glances at the clock and tries to remember Kili’s constant murmuring over timezones.  
  
“I’m sorry to call you while you’re at work, but Kili gave me your number and I have a favour to ask.” He can hear a hum of movement in the background, motorbikes and city chatter.  
  
“Of course. What can I do?”  
  
“Less of a favour, more of a warning, I suppose. I’m coming back for the week, I’ll fly in on Monday morning. Thorin might be willing to speak with me but this isn’t a conversation I should be having from half a world away.”  
  
“Oh,” Bilbo says. “Well that sounds like a decent plan. But can you afford to just take the week off?”  
  
“I have a number of holidays saved up from missing Christmas.” He hears him chuckle against the distant sound of traffic. “Twice. Anyway, I was hoping you could keep Kili out of our flat for just a few hours on Monday morning. I’m planning on dropping my things off and then taking a cab straight to his office.”  
  
Bilbo frowns, holding his palm against his mouth. “I can’t say I understand why you don’t want him to know.”  
  
“He’d want to go with me. But I think we both know that it’d be best for him to stay at work.” When Bilbo doesn’t respond, Fili continues with, “I’ll tell him the second I’m done, or better yet, you can. We wouldn’t want a repeat of last time.”  
  
“You picked up on that did you?” Bilbo asks, tapping his pen against the desk.  
  
“Immediately.”  
  
Bilbo remembers Fili’s bright eyes and wide set grin, how happy he looked in the low light of the Barbican Centre. He thinks of the boy from Thorin’s stories, quiet and competent and endlessly responsible, the golden child to Kili’s wayward shadow. But to Kili’s eyes his brother is kind and clever and quick to laugh. He calls him Hyperion, reads the words from Homer’s _Odyssey_ as if they’re written just for him, the Titan of diligence and light. Bilbo wonders if he wouldn’t be better suited to Prometheus, manipulative and cunning but without the ambition to quicken his fall.    
  
“Kili may be an excellent host but he’s certainly far from the world’s best actor.”  
  
Bilbo smiles despite himself. “Send me your flight details, and I’ll make sure he stays at my flat Sunday night. Mind you, he likely would anyway.”  
  
“Thank you,” Fili sighs into the receiver. “I appreciate it.”  
  
“Good luck, Fili,” he says, and they hang up without saying goodbye.  
  
—  
  
He receives consistent texts from Fili, updating him on his progress through central London. He’s mindful and efficient and Bilbo hates himself for the alarm bells that haven’t quite stopped ringing since Thorin found his letter the week before. Fili’s most recent message reads ‘Just arrived in Bank.’ Bilbo sighs, steadying himself and makes his way into Kili’s office.  
  
It’s littered with papers and half empty cardboard boxes and for once he finds the mess rather endearing. Kili glances up at him, his sleeves rolled back and his hair tied out of his eyes, before returning his attention to his monitor. “I don’t have the addresses yet,” he says. “Nori’s working on it.” He doesn’t answer, instead he takes a seat across from Kili’s desk, his hands folded in his lap.  
  
This appears to get his attention as he tears his eyes away from the screen, watching him. “What’s going on?” He asks, finally.  
  
“Fili’s meeting with Thorin right now in Bankside.”  
  
He stares for a moment, expression unchanging, before his face breaks out in a wide, childish grin. “He’s home?”  
  
“Yeah, for the week. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier. It’s just-“  
  
“I understand,” Kili says, still smiling as he begins closing out windows on his computer. “I know you think I’m hard on Thorin for how he was with me, and maybe I am. But I know my brother and he has just as many bones to pick but none of them match my own. They need this,” he says.  
  
“Yeah,” Bilbo agrees. “I think they do. Anyway,” he stands, idly tapping the edge of Kili’s desk. “I’m sure you’ve already guessed.”  
  
“I have day day off,” he says, reaching down to switch off his computer.  
  
“You’re in a rush. He did just arrive in Bank, you know. And I’m giving you a half week, by the way. I expect gratitude.”  
  
“And you have it, nothing but. And anyway it takes ages to get to Bethnal Green from here,” Kili says, reaching for his coat. “We’ll call you when he gets home and I’ll make him tell you everything.”  
  
“You won’t,” Bilbo says as Kili bends down to kiss him on the cheek. “I know you won’t.”  
  
“Well we’ll call eventually,” he amends. “He’ll definitely text you, anyway.”  
  
“Go home,” Bilbo shouts after him, but Kili is already at the lift, jabbing the button repeatedly and waving with his back turned.  
  
—  
  
Thorin sits with folded legs in front of his father’s grave, facing the stone. He appears to hear Bilbo coming, sitting up straighter as he wanders down the path. “It’s my fault, isn’t it,” he says without turning. The tips of his ears are pink from the chilly evening air and Bilbo wonders how long he’s been out here.  
  
“I’m not sure it’s anybody’s fault,” he says, taking a seat beside him, resting back against his great-aunt’s headstone. “They’re in love.”  
  
“And what happens when they fall out of it?” Bilbo plucks blades of grass from the sodden ground, unable to answer. “Or worse, when just one of them does?”  
  
It’s the question Bilbo has spent a year unable to answer. He wishes that Kili’s books were right, that humans were born with two heads and two hearts. But Bilbo’s old enough to know that Plato only just missed the mark. “Then we’ll cross that bridge, won’t we?” He asks. “What else are you going to do? Refuse to speak to them whilst they continue on regardless?”  
  
Thorin stares resolutely at his father’s gravestone. “What would your parents have done?” He asks.  
  
“I didn’t know my father well enough to guess, but my mother was a stringent libertarian.” He sees the slightest hint of a smile at Thorin’s lips. “This isn’t anything new,” he reminds him. “You may have just found out about it, but they’ve been this way for years.”  
  
“Kili is so young,” Thorin whispers. “They both are.”  
  
Bilbo hums in agreement. “We never feel young at the time, do we though?” Thorin doesn’t answer. “How old were you when you took in two boys that weren’t yours?” He asks, instead.  
  
“Old enough,” he answers, and Bilbo smiles.  
  
“I’m sure you felt like you were born at the age of forty. But I promise, you were young once too,” he says, pausing to trace his aunt’s name with the tip of his finger. “What did Fili tell you?”  
  
“Things he should’ve told me years ago,” Thorin whispers. “The answers to questions I should have been asking.” Bilbo shifts in the grass, moving towards him and taking Thorin’s hand, interlacing his fingers over his palm. “I don’t know what to do.”  
  
“What you’ve always done,” Bilbo says.  
  
Thorin uses his free hand to pry up handfuls of grass in quiet desperation as he squeezes Bilbo’s fingertips. “Did you read it? His letter?”  
  
“No,” Bilbo says, after a moment. “It wasn’t mine to read.”  
  
“It’s dangerous,” Thorin whispers. “Feeling like that.”  
  
Bilbo thinks of his mother, laying her flowers each week, touching her hand to the granite headstone, the only thing left of the man she loved. “Isn’t it always, though?” He asks.  
  
Thorin watches him like he knows exactly what he’s thinking and Bilbo can imagine what that letter said, what love Pollux must have had for his brother to bargain with death. “Have I ruined this?” Thorin’s whispered voice mirrors Kili’s, asking the very same question just a note too low.  
  
His mother’s voice begins to spin. “There’s no sense in trying to walk against a storm when you can just as easily wait for it to pass.”    
  
“I was angry,” Thorin says. “And scared and guilty.”  
  
“I know,” Bilbo tells him.  
  
“And when you came by the next morning, I realised that out of everything I’ve ruined in my lifetime, this may be the the most important.” He talks as if it’s a novelty, the geyser of words that fall from his teeth. “And I needed to know if you felt the same, if I’ve ruined it.”  
  
“Well,” Bilbo says with a smile. “We all know where Kili got it from, don’t we?”  
  
“Is he okay?” He asks, clearing his throat.  
  
“He’s with Fili, so I’m sure he’s fine.” Bilbo stands, brushing himself off and holds out a hand to Thorin. “It’s freezing out here,” he says. “I can see you shivering. Go home, soak in the bath, and maybe if you’re feeling up for it I’ll see you on Sunday.”  
  
“Yes,” Thorin says, a tad too quickly. “I’ll be here.”  
  
Bilbo grips his hand for a moment longer than he really needs to before he finally lets go.  
   
—  
  
They call him after dinner, breathless as they fight over the settings on Kili’s mobile. “Jesus, can you just let me do it, please? Sorry Bilbo. We can hear you now.”  
  
“Hello Kili, hello Fili,” he says as he bends down to look through the oven door, checking the tops of his scones with a worried frown. “I imagine you have some news?”  
  
“Not much,” Kili says.  
  
“Yes that was actually directed at your brother.” He hears Fili’s snort of laughter and the shuffle of movement between them.  
  
“Honestly, I don’t have much to say. We talked more about my career and his relative benevolence towards it than we did our relationship. He’s not angry, that much I’ve gathered.”  
  
“No,” Bilbo agrees. “I didn’t think he would be.”  
  
“When I was leaving he told me that he only ever wanted us to be happy, and the details are just that. I don’t know if it’s acceptance or forgiveness, but I think it’s a good sign.” Fili’s voice is light and distant and Kili remains notably silent.  
  
“Kili?” Bilbo asks.  
  
“He doesn’t have anything to forgive us for,” Kili snaps and Fili sighs in the background.  
  
“Kee, let’s just-“  
  
“No, fuck it. I mean, he has no right to act all high and mighty about this whole thing.”  
  
“He’s really not,” Fili says. “He’s just trying to understand.”  
  
“Or you’re giving him way too much credit.”  
  
Bilbo sits and listens with his palm to his mouth as Fili tries to placate his brother, a conversation they’ve clearly had once already. “Well it sounds like progress to me,” he says, interrupting them with a murmur of finality in his voice. “I’m glad you went to speak with him.”  
  
“Me too,” Fili admits. “Did he happen to call you? I thought he might, afterwards.”  
  
“No,” he says, not yet willing to spill any more of his heart. So he hangs up, telling them to enjoy their week, and keeps the memory of Thorin’s voice tucked firmly to his chest.  
  
—  
  
“Come in,” Bilbo calls, glancing up as his office door swings open to Fili dressed in black jeans and a light knit sweater.  
  
“I’m sorry to bother you at work,” he says, smiling. “But Kili told me you generally take your lunch around this time.”  
  
Bilbo glances at the clock. “Well, he’s certainly correct. Is this an invite?”  
  
“It is,” Fili says with a smile, reaching for Bilbo’s jacket left draped across a filing cabinet and holding it out for him to take. “We have a reservation for one o’clock, if you have no objections to Japanese.”  
  
“None at all,” he says. “Is Kili already at the locks?”  
  
“He’s in bed, actually. Having the world’s longest lie in. I was hoping you wouldn’t mind just me for company.”  
  
“Oh no, of course not,” Bilbo says, hoping his little moment of hesitation didn’t come across as rude. He reaches for his office keys and follows Fili out the door, walking quickly to keep up with his measured pace.    
  
“I’m sorry to surprise you like this,” Fili says. “But you don’t know me very well.”  
  
“No, I don’t,” Bilbo agrees.  
  
“And I can tell that it makes you uncomfortable.”  
  
He tucks his nose into the collar of his jacket. It still smells faintly of Kili’s aftershave and his own breezy detergent. “Not uncomfortable,” he assures him, but Fili smiles kindly as he shakes his head.  
  
“I’d be worried if you took this all with as much ease as Kili seems to think you have.”  
  
“You’re very considerate,” Bilbo says. It’s not the word he meant to use, and they both appear to know it.  
  
“Balin always told me I would make a decent MP,” Fili tells him. “If it weren’t for my politics.”  
  
They walk to the locks in comfortable silence, dodging the afternoon crowds and heading towards the sushi restaurant situated alongside the water. They pick a table in the back and Fili sits against the wall, eyeing the menu as Bilbo takes a seat across from him. “I’d like to get to know you,” Fili says, as he runs an idle finger down a list of appetisers. “If nothing else, we have Kili and Thorin in common, and as far as starting points go, that’s rather hard to beat.”  
  
Bilbo expects them to exchange stories, to share exasperated sighs at Kili’s expense like he and Thorin did, sitting with their backs to his father’s grave. But instead they talk politics, recount concerning reports over the escalating violence in Burundi, discuss the new tax scheme for charitable trusts, criticise New Labour and old policy with perhaps more indignity than they can really afford.  
  
“You know,” Fili says, pointing at Bilbo with his chopsticks. “My last year in uni, Jack Straw was taking over an international state building course as a visiting professor.”  
  
“No,” Bilbo begins. “You didn’t-”  
  
“I did,” he says gravely. “It was the only thing that fit in my timetable.”  
  
“I’m ashamed of you”  
  
“If it helps,” Fili begins. “The title of my final paper was ‘Parliament’s Straw Man: The Fallacy of Foreign Policy in Iraq,’ but I don’t think he appreciated the joke.”  
  
Bilbo snorts into his bowl. “If only Kili had an ounce of your subtlety.”  
  
“He would be infinitely less fun,” Fili says with a smile.  
  
He pays the bill, snatching it off the table before Bilbo has the chance to rummage for his wallet, insisting that it’s the least he can do. They dress for the autumn bite of the locks and linger just outside, the station to their backs. Fili’s hair is windswept, slightly longer than when he last saw him, and a stray curl falls in front of his eyes. “Thank you,” he says, his hands in his pockets. “I know only so much can be gleamed over lunch but we have time.”  
  
“We certainly do,” Bilbo agrees. “And I had a lovely afternoon.”  
  
Fili holds out a hand but Bilbo shakes his head. “You lot,” he says, pulling him into a hug. Fili appears surprised, unsure of what to do with his hands, and Bilbo pats his back reassuringly. “You’ll learn,” he tells him and Fili smiles as he pulls away.  
  
“I’m certain I will.”  
  
—  
  
Bilbo comes in to work the next morning to an email from Kili, a single line of text: _How did it go?_ He wants to tell him that he no longer wishes to reconcile the golden boy of Thorin’s memory and the man that Kili described late at night, sprawled across his sofa. Instead he’ll put the pieces together as they come.  
  
But he can’t bring himself to allude to what has laid hidden beneath the foundations of their friendship and instead he writes back with a flawless review of the restaurant neither of them had visited before and mourns Kili’s inability to hold conversations of an intelligent nature that don’t revolve around the Greek antiquity. He receives a reply of “ _fuck you both and your politics degrees_ ” for his efforts. It’s followed up, a few hours a later, with a short: _Thank you for everything._    
  
Kili doesn’t need to know that Bilbo had his doubts, because now he’s seen the way Fili’s feet shifted against the carpet in his office, how he sat with his piano player’s posture and smiled in a way that betrayed his nerves. He doesn’t seem like a man who generally has to work to make a good impression, and that tells him enough.    
  
—  
  
On Friday night they offer to cook him dinner, though it’s more of a demand on Kili’s part, so Bilbo shows up to their flat at half past seven with a bottle of wine that makes Kili wrinkle his nose at the sight. “This will go perfectly with Kili’s recipe,” Fili says, pouring them both a glass.  
  
“You two are disgusting.” He has some distressingly high pitched pop music playing from bluetooth speakers with his hair tied into a messy bun and the strings to a previously untouched apron tied around his neck.  
  
“We’re adults,” Fili reminds him with a hand to his waist as he peers over his brother’s shoulder and into the simmering pot.  
  
“Go be adults in the other room. This still has a while to sit.”  
  
Fili glances back at him, smiling. “I believe we’re being kicked out.”  
  
“Remarkable,” Bilbo says, following him into the living room. “And usually I have to threaten him with eviction to get him anywhere near a stove.”  
  
“He wanted to do something for you,” Fili says in a low voice. “He’s been stressing about it all day. Made me go with him all the way to Borough Market to get his ingredients. You know, he even planned for desert.”  
  
Bilbo laughs, peaking through the kitchen doorway just in time to see Kili rummage through the fridge for a block of parmesan. Fili sips at his wine, watching his brother just as closely with a hint of a smile at his lips, the same reverent awe in his eyes. “I’m coming back, you know,” he says quietly, motioning for him to follow as he takes careful steps down the hall.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Once my contract is up, I’m coming back.” Fili’s hand lingers against the banister and Bilbo can hear Kili’s off key singing from the kitchen.  
  
“When did you decide that?” He asks, at a loss for anything else to say.  
  
“The second I took the job. It was part of my terms, that I would be allowed to transfer after two and a half years.”  
  
“Why didn’t you tell him?”  
  
“Because Kili has never been able to fathom a world where he is the closest person to his own heart.” Fili finishes the rest of his wine in one steady swallow, leaving the empty glass balanced on the steps. “And that’s a very dangerous thing.” Fili leads him up the stairs and to their shared bedroom, the door that always remains perpetually closed. He reaches for the lamp switch, flicking it on and flooding the room with soft yellow light.  
  
“Oh,” Bilbo whispers, standing at his side. It is cosy and lived in and slightly cluttered but it’s the wall above the bed that catches his eye first, covered with photographs across every free surface. They are plain prints, unframed, a mix of matte and reflective shine, but every one is beautiful. He spots a rusted foot bridge stretched across a frozen river, a flash of autumn leaves against concrete, the outline of a windowsill at dawn. But mostly what he sees are photographs of Kili, breathtaking and simple, his hand reaching for a glass, the edge of his smile, the smallest curve of his lips, his fingers tracing a date in the sand, his shoulders hunched against rain.  
  
“Have you?” Bilbo asks softly.  
  
“Have I what?”  
  
“Imagined a world without Kili in it?”  
  
His eyes don’t leave the photographs. “I don’t have to. I was old enough to remember when he was born. And that, I think, is the difference. I can’t go backwards, but he can learn.”  
  
“You’re very talented, you know,” Bilbo tells him. He reaches out for a picture of Kili laughing, his eyes drawn to the lens.  
  
“That’s one of my favourites too,” Fili says.  
  
“Why did you stop?”  
  
“I haven’t. I just don’t print them anymore. I can’t be lugging photo albums around everywhere I go.”  
  
“He hides them from me,” Kili says, leaning in the doorway, watching them both.  
  
“I am not.”  
  
“He is,” Kili says to Bilbo, nodding his head. “Hiding pictures of his Lebanese boyfriend.”  
  
A photo of Thorin sits off to the left, frowning at the camera, mouth open with a scolding remark at his lips. Bilbo smiles, tracing the edge, and finds another one of him standing with his back to the camera, bent over a stove, bracing one hand against the granite countertop. It is familiar and comforting and Bilbo’s chest aches thinking of all the times he’s seen Thorin’s shoulders shift and unwind.  
  
They pretend not to notice, pointing at memories with crooked fingers, until finally Bilbo asks, “Would you have liked to be a photographer?”  
  
“No,” Fili says even as Kili frowns in disbelief.  
  
“You love photography,” he says.  
  
“You can love more than one thing, Kee,” he reminds him, leaning in closer to inspect the reflection of a streetlamp on a flooded sidewalk.  
  
“I know that,” Kili says, eyes trained on the floor. “Anyway, I have to go check the sauce.” He lingers for a moment longer in the doorway, before turning and walking back down the stairs.  
  
“It’s a work in progress,” Fili tells him, watching from the corner of his eye. “But Kili appears increasingly jealous of an entire nation.”  
  
Bilbo looks up at the photographs, Fili’s heart poured onto citric acid and silver halide, and imagines what it must have been like for Kili to grow up with those photographs hanging above his head as he slept. He imagines seeing love laid bare, unequivocal and unconditional, and thinks that he might feel the same, if suddenly he had to share that space with the docks of Beirut.  
  
“He’ll come around,” Bilbo tells him. He watches Fili glance back at the photo of Kili laughing, his head thrown back, before he nods in agreement.  
  
“I’m sure he will.”    
  
—  
  
Bilbo sits back against his father’s gravestone and stares up at the low flying planes, imagining that Fili is onboard every jet that passes overhead, returning to the yellow air of Lebanon. He waits for the phone call that will summon him back home, but Heathrow is a long way from Leyton, and he has this time at least. He closes his eyes to the distant sound of construction and the rumble of passing trains and when he opens them it’s to Thorin walking down the path, two sets of flowers in his hand.  
  
Bilbo smiles up at him, too tired for a moment to reassure anyone but himself, too overwhelmed by all the broken hearts that he keeps tucked along side his own. Thorin lays one bouquet across the top of his father’s grave and sits at Bilbo’s side, handing him purple irises wrapped in thin paper, held together with yellow ribbon.  
  
“I’ve never had much time for relationships,” Thorin says quietly. “I didn’t really mind. There are other types of love and those I had in abundance.” Bilbo breathes a sigh for the very same feeling he’s kept lodged in his ribcage for years and years. He’d always loved and loved dearly and has been left to wonder what it is about this that makes it any different.  
  
“This is the kind you can ruin,” Thorin says for him. “I made mistakes with the boys, with my siblings, but luckily for all of us we can’t ever get away from each other. But we could lose you, and I think that’s what makes this so terrifying.”  
  
“I’m not so sure you could,” Bilbo says finally, plucking a petal from an iris to tuck into his pocket. “I’m fairly certain Kili made copies of my house keys while I wasn’t looking.” Thorin smiles but doesn’t appear to have anything else to say. So Bilbo steadies himself, takes lead as he always does and says, “If you can forgive me for lying by omission, I can forgive you for your reaction.”  
  
“We can start again?” He asks, his voice similar to Kili’s now, uncertain and out of depth.  
  
“I don’t think it works like that,” Bilbo says. “How about we just start here. Would you like to come to dinner tomorrow?”  
  
Thorin watches him like a confirmation. “Yes,” he breathes. “I would like that very much.”  
  
—  
  
Kili watches from where he sits at the kitchen table, reviewing the guest list for their upcoming auction and sending Bilbo suspicious glances from over the edge of his laptop. “Why are you cleaning?” He asks, as Bilbo carefully wipes down the stove, scrubbing away at dried stock and grease splatters.  
  
“I always clean,” he says. “Now stop bothering me and do your work.” Kili had turned up last night, silent and sunken in, but at least he wasn’t crying. “He’ll text me when he lands,” was all he said and Bilbo didn’t push it.  
  
“Right, but you’re like obsessively cleaning. It’s putting me on edge.”  
  
Bilbo ignores him and finishes tidying up, keeping an eye on the oven. “Set the table, will you?” He watches as Kili dutifully digs out two plates and two sets of silverware before returning to his laptop. Bilbo makes sure his coat is hung at the door with his keys tucked away safely in his pocket before sitting down to wait.  
  
Thorin is always punctual and arrives at three minutes past, bottle of red wine in hand. “Bilbo,” Kili shouts from the kitchen. “Who the fuck’s at the door?”  
  
Thorin glances down at him, frowning, so Bilbo leans up and kisses his cheek just as Kili turns the corner. “You’ll be fine,” he says, grabbing his coat from the hook. “And I’ll see you in roughly two and a half hours.”  
  
“What?” Kili snaps, just as Bilbo shuts the door behind him and quickly locks the bottom bolt with the heavy antique key that he’s certain Kili has no double to. He hears banging from the other side and Kili’s eyes appear at the letter box, glaring out at him.  
  
“Bilbo, I swear to God you cannot lock us in your fucking flat.”  
  
“I’ve made sure you’re well fed. There’s Guinness in the fridge and Thorin has wine so really you shouldn’t be complaining.” He shrugs on his coat and Kili’s eyes widen comically from the slit in the door.  
  
“No, no, Bilbo- stop it. Come back.”  
  
“I’m off to see a film down at the Picture House on High Street. That gives you two plenty of time to sort yourselves out.” He hears a sigh from behind Kili and assumes Thorin has left to pour himself a sizeable glass of wine.  
  
“Bilbo- come on. I can’t do this without you here,” Kili hisses.  
  
“Oh I’m very certain you can. I’ll see you soon.”  
  
“I’m going to pour bleach into all of your window boxes,” Kili shouts as Bilbo heads for the stairs. He waves just before turning the corner and digs his mobile out of his back pocket, switching it off.  
  
—  
  
The Picture House has a penchant for old films so Bilbo is pleasantly surprised to find a documentary on Janis Joplin playing instead of something ancient and shrill like the movies Kili inevitably leaves on whenever classics night rolls around. He listens as the familiar chords of ‘My Baby’ play through the credits and thinks of how his mother would sing it when he was a child, twirling him around the kitchen, her voice soft and mellow and so unlike the original. He loves it still and listens until the song is over and the lights come up and he is the only one left in the theatre.  
  
He turns on his phone to a procession of increasingly desperate text messages from Kili which drop off by about eight thirty. He takes his time walking home, and when he finally arrives, unlocking the door and peaking through the hallway, it’s to silence. “Hello,” he calls.  
  
He finds them in the living room, Kili sprawled flat across the coffee table, his knees bent over the edge, surrounded by a small stack of empty beer cans. Thorin is in Bilbo’s armchair, a nearly empty wine bottle at his feet. “I still cannot believe you locked us in your flat,” Kili tells the ceiling.  
  
“Dinner was excellent though,” Thorin adds and Kili snorts in disbelief.  
  
“So,” Bilbo begins, taking a seat on the arm of Thorin’s chair. “How’d it go?” Thorin hands him the wine and watches as Bilbo drinks straight from the bottle.  
  
“Initially Kili tried to lock himself in his bedroom.”  
  
“The guest room,” Bilbo corrects him.  
  
“The guest room. But it turns out your doors are very flimsy. You should likely look into that.” Thorin glances up at him with shining eyes and Bilbo has to resist the urge to crawl into his lap and take his face in his hands and count every speck of light in his irises.  
  
“And then we got drunk,” Kili adds from the coffee table.  
  
“Tipsy,” Thorin amends.  
  
“Yeah just wait until you try and get out of that chair, mate. We’ll see who’s tipsy then. Oh also-” Kili rolls over to face him, his cheek pressed flat against the table. “We found your passport.”  
  
“He found your passport,” Thorin says. “I was not party to this at all.”  
  
“So we are both now fully aware that your birthday is in two weeks. And you will be subjected to both gift giving and failed attempts at baking.”  
  
“Will I also be allowed a quiet night in my own flat?”  
  
“Yeah, no, absolutely not.”  
  
“We’ll revisit this subject when you’re not intent on getting back at me,” Bilbo says, standing. “Now are we fine?”  
  
Kili glances up at Thorin and after a moment they both nod. “Yeah,” Kili says, pushing himself up with one hand. “We’re alright.”  
  
—  
  
They start again with dinners and Sunday afternoons in Saint Andrew’s. Thorin brings him flowers to leave with his father and Bilbo always packs two flasks of tea and he watches as his shoulders fall, inch by inch, relaxing under the weight of his apparent forgiveness.  
  
“You never did tell me,” Bilbo says after a while, clasping Thorin’s hand in his as he pulls him from the muddy ground. “What it was you two talked about.”  
  
“I didn’t do much talking,” Thorin assures him. “Though Kili did a decent amount of yelling.”  
  
“I’m not surprised.” They walk slowly, careful of the muddy ground, the slopping edge of the path back to the gates. Thorin doesn’t let go of his hand so Bilbo adjusts their fingers to overlap. “Have you spoken to him since?”  
  
“No,” he admits. “Though I’ve spoken to Fili. He has always been far kinder than his brother, though I think less honest.”  
  
Bilbo hums in agreement. “I think perhaps it’s time for Kili to move back to Bethnal Green.”  
  
Thorin looks down, surprised. “Has he-“  
  
“You know he hasn’t,” Bilbo says, waving him off. “But he should have a year or so of living alone, it’ll do him good.”  
  
“A year?” He asks and Bilbo sees the recognition in his eyes, blown glass and breaking, and Bilbo sighs for his silent nephews.  
  
“More or less. Fili’s contract ends in August, and before you sulk, he hasn’t told anyone yet.” He tugs Thorin onto the pavement, watching him stumble to keep up. “Now, about Kili. Perhaps it’s best if it comes from you two first.”  
  
—  
  
“Jesus, Kili, what on earth is that?” He is wearing sweatpants and a band tee, his hair tied up, digging mutilated toast from the top rack of the oven. He looks marginally more human than he tends to on weekends and despite his ink stained fingers and pillow marked skin, Bilbo thinks this may be an improvement.    
  
“Cinnamon toast,” he says, a slightly defensive edge to his voice. “A perfectly valid Sunday morning breakfast.”  
  
“It’s nearly noon,” Bilbo says and Kili shrugs. “Explain to me what’s in that.”  
  
Kili speaks around the hollow of a spoon, his voice muffled. “Butter, sugar, and cinnamon. Throw it in the oven. Cinnamon toast.”  
  
“That’s disgusting.”  
  
“It’s delicious,” he says. “Fili would make it every weekend. Even cut the edges off.” Kili hands Bilbo one of the mugs from the counter and takes his own, balancing the plate on his palm as he pads into the living room. “So,” he continues with a sigh, ripping off pieces of his toast with meticulous precision, catching cinnamon at the corners of his lips. “They want me to start staying in Bethnal Green.”  
  
“I know,” Bilbo says, taking a seat beside him. “Thorin told me.”  
  
“Do you want me to?” He is staring down at his plate, picking off the crust, his shoulders hunched forward.  
  
“I think you should,” he offers. “You can’t hide here forever.”  
  
“I’m not hiding. I like it here.”  
  
Bilbo sighs, leaning heavily on Kili’s shoulder. He smells of cinnamon and laundry detergent and green apple shampoo. “It’ll be good for you.” Kili reaches for the remote and turns up the volume on the television, ignoring any further attempts at conversation. Sometimes Bilbo thinks he’ll miss him just as much, but then he sees the tea ring left on his coffee table from Kili’s mug set inches away from a coaster and thinks better of it.  
  
—  
  
He opens his eyes when his mattress dips under Kili’s weight. He slips under the duvet and presses himself against Bilbo’s side, curled like a child at the small of his back. “You’re far too big for this,” Bilbo says, his voice thick with sleep.  
  
“Not like you’ll have to put up with me any longer,” Kili mumbles, his fingers tighten on the sleeve of his top, twisting into the fabric. “The cab is coming at eleven, and I’ll need help with some of my clothes. And then you’ll never see me again.”  
  
“You do realise we work together.”  
  
Kili’s breath is warm against the back of his neck, a dramatic sigh into his skin. “I’ll just be all alone, in my dark, furniture barren flat.”  
  
“We have lunch together every day.”  
  
“Fending for myself.”  
  
“You can still come for dinner,” he offers, rubbing the last of the sleep from his eyes.  
  
“Abandoned by my family.”  
  
Bilbo snorts, rolling over to face him. “It’s not so bad,” he says. “Living alone. You might actually enjoy it.”  
  
“I could choke and die or slip in the shower and no one would know until my neighbours began to complain about the smell,” Kili says.  
  
“If any one of us went a day without hearing from you, rest assured we’d fear the worst.”  
  
“I hate this,” Kili says and it’s almost enough to make him feel guilty. Bilbo pulls him into a hug and Kili fits like a gangly teenager up against his chest, clutching at his shoulders until he can feel the slightest bite of his fingernails.    
  
“You are an actual adult, you know.” Bilbo says into his hair.  
  
“I don’t feel like it.”  
  
“No,” Bilbo concedes. “You never really do.”  
  
—  
  
Fall has just turned frigid when Bilbo receives his own letter written on the same yellow paper with olive tree postage stamps. He opens it with a frown, recognising the handwriting at once, and begins to read.  
  
_Bilbo,_  
  
_I never believed in Kili’s fates, in his Greek poetry and fables, but I cannot deny luck. And luck, at least, may explain it. Our family is almost textbook dysfunctional, as terrible as that sounds, and I always thought that one day we’d inevitably have to cut our losses and run. Kili didn’t mind, though I imagine he would have the second he realised how much rent tends to go for in central London. But it’s a thought that has kept me awake at night since I was seventeen. I’ve spent the majority of my life adding up every outcome, every possibility, and always coming out in red. But I didn’t account for you._  
  
_I cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done. But I think, if I could guess, you’d say I didn’t have to. And perhaps you’d be right, because between us we share two crucially important people and what better circumstance could there be to give rise to a very productive partnership?_  
  
_Thorin has an obsessive love for Casablanca and by proxy Herman Hupfeld. He will never admit to either and will stand by his assertion that he simply doesn’t listen to music. His favourite dessert is tiramisu and he has always, inexplicably, wanted to visit St. Petersburg but has never taken the time off. He has a bit of a penchant for driving quickly, get him on the M1 next time he’s in a mood and watch him fly. And as my final gift to you, please see enclosed._  
  
Bilbo picks up the envelope from the table and pulls out a photograph wrapped in a sheet of lined paper to protect it from the light. It is Thorin, decades younger, sitting along a rocky beach in Cornwall with a swaddled infant in his arms. “Oh dear,” he murmurs, running his fingers over the glossy surface.  
  
He finds Kili’s number and laughs into his mobile. “You didn’t tell me your uncle used to have a pony tail.”  
  
—  
  
Bilbo has always had a large family. It is full of cousins and aunts and grandparents that still send out Christmas cards and emails with video attachments of school plays. He had never thought of family beyond his staggered blood line, but now he finds himself adding another branch, sewn tight against his arteries.  
  
“Prim,” he sighs into the phone. “It’ll be up there for New Year’s, it’s not the end of the world. I just won’t be in on Christmas day.”  
  
“You’re always here on Christmas day,” she says. Bilbo holds his tongue regarding her twenty-something tendency to spend her Christmases with the boyfriend of the season and instead humours her attempts to guilt him onto a train to Yorkshire. “And the kids are all asking after you. They miss you terribly. What am I supposed to tell them?”  
  
“That I’ll see them all on the 28th. Perhaps it would help to mention that I’m bringing a guest, and he gives very good presents indeed.” He glances behind him, where Thorin sits on the sofa with a tablet in hand, answering emails and pretending he isn’t listening in on every word. “Especially when he’s trying to make a good impression. Though I’m sure Frodo loves me dearly, double the presents should appease him.”  
  
“Are you staying in London?”  
  
“Yes,” he says.  
  
Prim’s voice turns salacious in seconds. “Just the two of you, then? Roaring fire, Boxing Day telly?”  
  
“Not quite. We have children tagging along I’m afraid, so it’s the full Christmas dinner and tree decorating the night before.” Thorin turns around to face him, mouthing ‘children’ with raised eyebrows.  
  
“Well he better be impressive, this man of yours, if we’re to do Christmas without you.”  
  
“You’re married to Drogo, my darling, so you will undoubtedly think so.”  
  
She snorts with laughter and Thorin eyes him skeptically from the ridge of his glasses. “Just for that I’m going to flirt with him inappropriately during dinner and instruct Drogo to do the same. Wish him luck. He’ll need it.”  
  
Bilbo hangs up the phone and takes a seat at Thorin’s side, running his fingers absentmindedly through the short hair on the nape of his neck. “They’re excited to meet you,” he says. “I’m going to give it another year before we bring the boys up, because frankly the Baggins aren’t known for their good looks and I fear all three of you at once may be a bit more than my family can actually handle. And Kili is a terrible flirt.”  
  
Thorin fights a losing battle against the smile at his lips and in an attempt to hide it he leans down and kisses him instead.  
  
—  
  
He watches Thorin get dressed, a silhouette against the brick wall. “You can turn on a light, you know, it won’t bother me.”  
  
Thorin hums in response, stringing his tie around his neck and sitting on the edge of the bed, his fingers following the ridge of Bilbo’s collarbone. “Go back to sleep.” He isn’t sure what time it is, but the sun has yet to rise and he surely won’t have to be up for hours yet.  
  
“You were going to leave without waking me,” he says, closing his eyes.  
  
“I wasn’t,” Thorin assures him with a kiss to his forehead. “I set an alarm on your mobile.”  
  
Bilbo watches with half lidded eyes as he gathers his things, his briefcase left by the bedside table. He pauses at the door, turning to face him, pale and dark in the half light. “I love you.”  
  
It’s the first time he’s ever said it, barely a whisper and it looks like it takes something out of him, like it scares him to say. If he had an ounce of Kili’s desperate need for metaphor Bilbo might think that it took the shadows of dawn to finally pull the words from where they've always sat, tucked so carefully behind his teeth. Bilbo has never put much stock in romance so he smiles and says, “Oh Thorin, I already knew that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone stop what you're doing and go look at [this actual work of art](http://rutobuka2.tumblr.com/post/139610234619/a-messy-drawing-of-green-and-gilded-by-nasri) from [rutobuka2.](http://rutobuka2.tumblr.com/) My heart has left my body.


End file.
